Religious Issues in the 1960 Campaign

[Tim Gratz]

I think only a handful of extremists have raised religion as a motive for the assassination.

We all know, however, what a role religion played in the 1960 election. The "Christian right" in 1960 was strongly opposed to the Kennedy candidacy based on his Catholicism. Kennedy did a masterful job of defusing the issue. particulary in the West Virginia primary and it is difficult to determine whether, on balance, Kennedy's religion helped or hurt him in the general election.

It is interesting to note how time changes such things. Now, of course, there is an emerging consensus between the evangelical (Protestant) conservatives and Catholics, particularly, of course, on such issues as abortion and euthanasia.

I don't want to initiate a big religious debate in the assassination forum. Just thought it interesting to note the political shifts that have occured in forty years.

[Jim Root]

Tim

I agree that the West Virginia primary may have played an important role in knocking Humphrey out of contention for the Democratic Party's nomination in 1960. Religion, organization and money are the topics most discussed when talking about this pivotal primary.

I believe it was the second Tuesday of May, 1960, an interesting historical moment that may have another twist that has been ignored by most historians. The Democratic primary had come down to two players, Humphrey that was pushing a new deal type liberal social agenda and Kennedy, the hawk, that was talking missle gaps, bomber gaps and a presidency that had gone soft on communism.

On May 1st Francis Gary Powers was shot down in his U-2 while on a spy mission over the Soviet Union. The Eisenhower administration had been assured that the pilot would not survive such an incident and provided a cover story that the U-2 was a peaceful NASA weather plane that had strayed off course. For the next seven days they stuck with this story until the Soviets produced the living pilot, spy film, incriminating documents and a confession. Eisenhower had to publicly admit that he had lied to the American public. The Paris peace summit then fell apart.

Would the election of 1960 have been different if Francis Gary Powers' U-2 had not been downed? Can you imagine if Richard Nixon, Dwight Eisenhower and Nikita Khruschev had had the photo op of the century as they signed a nuclear treaty of some sort and could claim the end of the Cold War? Would a "New Era of Peaceful Coexistance and Progress" be Nixon's campaign slogan? Would Kennedy, the "Hawk" have had a chance if the election had been about peace?

Interesting questions: Did Lee Harvey Oswald's defection to Russia lead to the downing of the U-2? Was there a "plot" to elect Kennedy? Did the "Hawks" want to get rid of the Eisenhower group that had become to close to the commies? Did the "Eastern Establishment" wan the election to go to one of their own instead of the poor Western Quaker? Wasn't Allen Dulles a Chatholic as well?

Questions to ponder while thinking about a man who would later refer to himself as a patsy after the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Jim Root

[Shanet Clark]

I think only a handful of extremists have raised religion as a motive for the assassination.

We all know, however, what a role religion played in the 1960 election.  The "Christian right" in 1960 was strongly opposed to the Kennedy candidacy based on his Catholicism.  Kennedy did a masterful job of defusing the issue. particulary in the West Virginia primary and it is difficult to determine whether, on balance, Kennedy's religion helped or hurt him in the general election.

It is interesting to note how time changes such things.  Now, of course, there is an emerging consensus between the evangelical (Protestant) conservatives and Catholics, particularly, of course, on such issues as abortion and euthanasia.

I don't want to initiate a big religious debate in the assassination forum.  Just thought it interesting to note the political shifts that have occured in forty years.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

First of all, Jim Root's sense of these things is worthy of close attention, and the manipulation not at all more than what actually probably occured.

But back to the Catholic Religion issue with JFK, I had this on another thread:

In the late 1800s the nineteenth century experienced a wave of TERRORISM.

Vigilante groups, self appointed white males used violence to co-ordinate and drive anti-democratic and anti-republican representative theories of power onto the national political stage, where they remained through until today.

In San francisco, New orleans and New york city, violent and murderous elites took hard right reactionary race baiting political positions, while taking over local and state political structures. Anti Asian and Anti Irish Catholic rhetoric drove the organizations efforts, and the tradition of the Know Nothing runs through secret societies until this day.

Self appointed race baiting whiter than white rednecks with money combined in the 1850-1900 period and they recombined, as the reaction of the late 20th century recapped many of these themes.

Joseph Kennedy and his four sons were Irish Catholic political bosses from Boston, Massachusetts, and while some in the Cambridge Harvard MIT Beacon Hill circle accepted and welcomed the Kennedy's entrepot to political power, others

centered in New Haven, Wall Street, Michigan and greater Los Angeles opposed the rise of the Kennedy's sons.

Vigilante elites. This is the key, paramilitary assassinations were common in the racially loaded Victorian period, when Irish and Asian were non white ethnic groups, Catholic leaders were killed.

When John Kennedy took the 1960 election, over fellow Senator and Vice President Richard Nixon, the aggravated elements of the right brought militant reactionary illegal force to bear, and the constitution was overhauled with the new succession doctrine of EXECUTIVE REMOVAL, in a law originally composed by Senator Estes Kefauver, who died in 1963 of a heart attack and ratified by the States in 1967, in the year before Lyndon Baines Johnson stepped down.

ALexander Haig, National Security Adviser to President Ford, Protege of Henry Kissinger and General Douglas MacArthur, served as White House Chief of Staff during the transition of power in August 1974. Recent indiscretions committed by the Haig ego point to a role for Al Haig in the Bay of Pigs, BAYO EDDIE, OPERATION TILT, OPERATION EXECUTIVE ACTION, CHAOS, COINTELL COUNTER INTELLIGENCE PROGRAM the domestic joint agency disruption of American Society and our political state in the Cold War 1960s and 1970s.

Another PROGRAM FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATION illegal domestic program was the INLET system, NSA MAIL COVER, FBI DOMESTIC BLACK BAG JOINT OPS,

and of course AM/LASH, ZR/RIFLE ZERO RIFLE and WH EXECUTIVE ACTION an illegal US domestic covert assassination team run by Howard Hunt out of Mexico City, but cooperating and coordinated by JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF, NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY, DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE, MARINE INTELLIGENCE and NAVAL INTELLIGENCE. Of course, marine intelligence is an oxymoron and very frightening entity, serving as the source for LEE HARVEY OSWALD, and his LEGEND.

The vigilantes of the anti Catholic reaction survived to mix with German rocket scientists and Nazi Pharmocological and Behavioural Psychologists in OPERATION ARTICHOKE which was a joint military illegal Domestic mind control, hypnosis and forced drugging PROGRAM.

Most famous of these was the MK/ULTRA, which combined PSYCHIC DRIVING or forced behavioural actions on witting ang unwitting individuals.

These forces, I believe came together to kill John Kennedy and overthrow our government through force and guile. RICHARD RUSSELL, Georgia Senator, Military and Intelligence Appriations Chair and Warren COmmission member, Exercised what enforcement and oversight which existed, which was nearly nil.

He and the Congress knew little of the PROGRAMS until November 1963.

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