So Republicans are taking the 50th opportunity of JFK's assassination to claim JFK as their own. Grover Norquist even praised JFK for being a member of the NRA:


Wonkette has a post explaining all the insanity, including Glenn Beck claiming that JFK "would be a Tea Party radical" if he was alive today. JFK may have cut taxes ("from a range of 20-91% to 14-65%," which is a rate that would make Norquist weep like a giant adult baby if someone pitched it today) but he was no teabagger. JFK also increased the minimum wage, unemployment benefits, and Social Security benefits. The only reason that Republicans can get away with claiming something like this is the conservative distortion field, which ignores important details like, say, historical context. If JFK saw today's America—where we throw people to the streets rather than provide basic mental health care, where young men snap on a monthly basis and shoot up public spaces across the country, where the wealth imbalance is more severe than it ever was in JFK's lifetime—he'd have to assume it was some sort of a bad joke.