Two things here: First, Republican presidential candidate and Joe McCarthy decoder ring owner Ted Cruz remains, as always, a deeply confused man.
“JFK campaigned on tax cuts, limiting government and standing up and defeating Soviet communists,” he said in a packed room at a restaurant here, his first stop on a swing through New Hampshire. “JFK would be a Republican today. He stood for religious liberty, and he would be tarred and feathered by the modern Democratic Party.”
It’s safe to say we all would be happy to have left tax cuts where John F. Kennedy left them and call it a sensible compromise. And his election was notable from a religious liberty standpoint because a good chunk of Americans were distinctly hostile to the notion of putting a papist in charge of things, requiring Kennedy to distance himself from his own Christian religion and reaffirm the separation between (his) faith and government. Limited government from a Kennedy standpoint meant, among other things, launching a scientific program to conquer space that was so ambitious it continues to be used as go-to example of what America can accomplish. Defeating communism included a Cuban Missile Crisis during which he emphatically did not do the one thing that all modern Republicans demand be done when faced with an international row: Bomb somebody.
So Ted Cruz would favor a government-backed "moon shot" to, say, cure cancer? The same Ted Cruz who is forever lobbying to shut down the government, rather than allowing it to odiously do things? Huh.
Odd ideas on one of America's most favored modern presidents aside, however: Who precisely is Cruz attempting to pander to here? I was not aware of any strong Republican push to be more like JFK. None of the other candidates are launching into campaign-trail promises to be more like John Kennedy. The number of Republican primary voters even in New Hampshire who want to hear their Republicans talk like a Kennedy is probably lower than the number of voters who want to hear their candidate talk like a character from The Princess Bride.
What an odd, odd man.