Not Your Daddy's Democrats

Rich Lowry: The Left Before The Fall

The real John F. Kennedy wasn't the paladin of liberal purity of myth. He was friends with Joseph McCarthy. In his 1952 campaign for Senate and his 1960 presidential campaign, he got to the right of his Republican opponents on key issues. "Kennedy did not want anyone to tag him as a liberal, which he regarded as the kiss of death in electoral politics," Piereson writes. As president, he was vigorously anti-communist, a tax-cutter and a cautious supporter of civil rights.

His kind of liberalism -- "tough and realistic," as Piereson puts it, in the tradition of FDR and Truman -- was carried away in the riptide of his death.

And now, the nation is stuck with:

Harry Reid - April 19, 2007

"I believe ... that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything."

Instead of...

John F. Kennedy

Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men.

Obama - July 24, 2007

"I would," he responded, when asked by a questioner via YouTube if he would be willing to meet - without precondition - in the first year of his presidency with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea.

Not...

John F. Kennedy

The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.

Rep. Gary Ackerman (D) New York - February, 2007

I mean, if the terrorists ever got a hold of this information, they’d get a platoon of lesbians to chase us out of Baghdad.

Rather than...

John F. Kennedy

It is an unfortunate fact that we can secure peace only by preparing for war.

The fall of the left... haven't they already hit bottom?

A nation which has forgotten the quality of courage which in the past has been brought to public life is not as likely to insist upon or regard that quality in its chosen leaders today - and in fact we have forgotten.

~ John F. Kennedy