You make me sad.
I sat here for a long time pondering what to say about would-be president Ted Cruz breaking out an oddly overdone John F. Kennedy impression to shill for yet-another-round-of tax cuts. Yeah,
I can't come up with anything.
“I would point out that in the 1960s, one of the most powerful, eloquent defenders of tax cuts was John F. Kennedy. As JFK said, ‘Some men see things as they are and ask why; I see things that never were and ask why not.’
“JFK would be a Republican today. There is no room for John F. Kennedy in the modern Democratic Party.”
He does the voice, too, which makes it
very strange and more than a little creepy.
For the pedantic, some men see is a George Bernard Shaw quote, though technically both John and Robert Kennedy "said" it because they quoted him. And if your idea of an inspirational, out-of-the-box notion that needs a soaring quote from great American voices is yet another tax cut on wealthy Americans, you may be overselling the thing a wee bit. Yet Another Tax Cut is the motto of the party; it's tattooed on Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback's knuckles. It's not a things that never were. You sticking up for the rights of fabulously wealthy Americans to contribute just a little less to their nation's well-being is not exactly landing a man on the moon.
We could sit here and roll our eyes at yet another assassinated liberal or Democratic hero being posthumously assimilated as a supposed conservative true believer by the very same movement that hated their guts in life, I suppose—but even that is getting a bit rote, and there's not much new ground to be covered in pointing out that Sen. Ted Cruz is both smarmy and not too bright.
I guess I'd settle for this: If both sides are agreed that we really, really like JFK's tax policies, let's take Cruz up on it. Let's return our federal tax policies to what they were in the Kennedy administration and be done with it.
In the spirit of bipartisanship, of course.