What's with the Conservative love for JFK all of the sudden?

[ForgoTheConsequence]

Is there any part of history that conservatives wont try to re-write?

[Scootaloo]

1. Bandwagoning. They console themselves by pointing out what an anti-communist he was

[paulkienitz]

4. the same bandwagon that Obama is riding when he praises Saint Reagan

[Scootaloo]

5. Pretty much. Dead president are apparently granted immunity by bipartisan agreement

When Carter passes on, expect to see some waxing eulogies from the right, just on that basis.

[jmowreader]

2. JFK passed a tax cut. They like tax cuts.

If they ever found out he cut taxes to 70 percent they'll spontaneously combust.

[busterbrown]

3. Just show the this letter which Mrs. Kennedy wrote

to Khrushchev... That i’ll shut em up...A President actually not trying to macho up which is contrary to right wing protocol.. This letter proves it..

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/11/19/jackie-kennedy-s-letter-to-khrushchev-my-last-nights-in-the-white-house.html

[JEFF9K]

6. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that conservatives were behing the assassination. ...

Dallas in 1963 was like Tea Bagger Land today!

[nyquil_man]

7. Rose-colored nostalgia.

Most of us engage in it from time to time but, with conservatives, it's a way of life.

[Nay]

8. Who knows--they hated him with a white-hot hatred back then because

the POPE was going to control the U.S. through him. The Catholics were going to outlaw all religions but their own. Etc., etc. The same shit as today, just dressed up in the bigotries of yesterday.

[nyquil_man]

10. Someone posted this a few days back:

[ancianita]

9. Nope. Remember Carl Rove's 'Empire' quote from his Bush days?

He said people like us are "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality...That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

There's nothing they won't rewrite if we let them.

[IrishAyes]

11. Well, he was so WHITE and RICH

Not that it detracts from him in the heart of good Democrats. But that's what matters to the Rethugs. He's been gone so long they're counting on people not remembering that they treated him badly too. Besides, they're so bereft of heroes themselves, now they have to start stealing ours!

And you're correct - they will never stop re-writing history. They're incurable liars and the truth's not in them.

[Liberal_Dog]

12. It Is Not Really New

For years, conservatives have oscillated between "JFK was a liberal sex pervert" to "JFK was actually conservative".

Just depends on what suits them at the moment.

[deutsey]

13. The right loves to co-opt heroes of the left

The left traditionally has a much broader popular appeal than the right, which, by its very nature, is elitist.

So the right takes the rhetoric of the left and uses it to wrap their elitist politics with them (e.g., a reactionary like Reagan using the language of a radical like Thomas Paine).

They also do the same with icons of the left: JFK was a conservative, MLK was a Republican...they've even tried to say that John Lennon turned conservative before he was killed. Ironically, as you point out, each of these men was also smeared by the right as subversive sex maniacs and/or drug addicts.

Because we don't have a strong left perspective represented in this country anymore and, consequently, because people have no actual context for where the left's popular rhetoric and heroes comes from, the right can frame them anyway they want and a lot of people will swallow it hook, line, and sinker.