Would JFK Recognize His Party?

Would JFK Recognize His Party?

by | Sep 8, 2020 | Blog

For three generations, John F. Kennedy has been one of the greatest and most venerated heroes of the Democratic Party. Countless leaders and luminaries of that Party came of age during Camelot or drew their inspiration from him. He certainly ranks with FDR as the most dominant political figure of the Party in the 20th century. His tragic assassination in Dallas in 1963 only raised his posture and position in the pantheon of American politics to near that of a demi-God to many.

Yet, what would JFK say about his Party today? What would he say about the Party of Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, AOC and last but always least, Sleepy Joe Biden? Would he even recognize the militant revolutionary socialist movement now masquerading as a legitimate American political party as the party of his presidency?

Let’s remember the roots of John F. Kennedy. Irish-Catholic. Devoutly religious.

The Catholicism of his family was of the pre-Vatican II variety and it saw in Communism, the Church’s most ferocious and diabolical enemy. The Kennedy family hated and loathed Communism, the murderous ideology that annihilated 100 million souls, destroyed churches, and slaughtered nuns and priests. What would he say about Bernie Sanders who spent his honeymoon in the Soviet Union or Karen Bass who praised and idolized Fidel Castro?

In fact, the Kennedy family was so anti-Communist that the family patriarch, Ambassador Joseph Kennedy openly questioned in 1940 ( long before Pearl Harbor ) why the United States should take sides in a war between the National Socialist killer Adolf Hitler and the International Socialist killer Joseph Stalin. He had a point. In the 1950s. Ambassador Kennedy was a financial supporter of

Wisconsin’s crusading Sen. Joe McCarthy who led the much-pilloried investigations into Communist subversion of the U.S. government but was vindicated forty years later by revelations in the Venona Files.

John F. Kennedy himself embraced the anti-Communism of his father. When the U.S. Senate voted to censure Sen. McCarthy in 1954, JFK did not vote. His own brother Bobby worked for Sen. McCarthy’s committee.

As a candidate for President in 1960, it could be argued that he actually ran to the right of his Republican opponent, Vice President Richard Nixon. He criticized the Eisenhower Administration for not spending enough on national defense and for allowing a dangerous “missile gap” to develop with the Soviet Union. He excoriated Ike for allowing Castro to come to power in Cuba. He made it very clear that he saw the United States in a clash of civilizations against a terrifying Communist foe. His Inaugural Address called on Americans to practice self-sufficiency ( “Ask Not What Your Country Can Do for You….” ) and vowed to pay any price to secure the survival of freedom and liberty.

As President – though his term was cut short by the bullets in Dallas – he increased defense spending, confronted the Soviet Union over missiles in Cuba and over Berlin, and was preoccupied with bringing about the downfall of Fidel Castro and freeing the Cuban people. He cut taxes, the first President to do that since the 1920s. His Treasury Secretary was Republican Douglas Dillon. He was concerned about controlling the federal budget deficit and inflation. He believed in pro-growth economics, making him an early version of Jack Kemp with whom he shared the same initials. He appointed judicial conservative Byron White – one of the two dissenters in Roe v. Wade — to the U.S. Supreme Court.

While he shared standard Democratic Party concerns about the poor and downtrodden, he was not the author of the welfare state monstrosities of the 1960s like Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps and the so-called “War on Poverty.” Those programs were enacted by his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson. 

When it came to Vietnam, Kennedy associated himself with the non-interventionist instincts of Papa Joe. While committed to helping South Vietnam defend itself from the Communists, he recognized that it was not America’s war to fight and issued the executive order to begin withdrawing forces in 1964, not long after his assassination. He was distrustful of the “deep state” and wanted to put the Central Intelligence Agency out of business.

All in all, many of the policies of JFK could have been the policies of President Donald Trump. That tells us how far the Democratic Party of President Kennedy has descended into madness and pure insanity. 

While he had his personal moral challenges, JFK remained to his death a faithful and practicing Roman Catholic. Can anyone see him embracing abortion to the moment of birth or transgenderism? Would he have encouraged the burning down of cities, destruction of monuments and statues, and looting of small businesses?

How can Americans who grew to maturity in the 1950s and 1960s and looked upon John F. Kennedy as a childhood icon now embrace the agenda of hate and nihilism pushed by the Democratic Party of 2020? How can they support a party that openly seeks the razing of the very foundations of the American Republic?

A party that seeks to suppress free speech and freedom of religion and has more in common with Stalin and Mao than Jefferson and Jackson?

The answer is they can’t and they won’t. And, that’s why the Biden-Harris ticket is doomed to a humiliating defeat on November 3.


Dr. James Veltmeyer is a prominent La Jolla physician voted “Top Doctor” in San Diego County in 2012, 2014, 2016, 2017, and 2019.  Dr. Veltmeyer can be reached at dr.jamesveltmeyer@yahoo.com and by visiting his website at drveltmeyer.com



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