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BHO is no JFK

By Doug Patton
February 4, 2008

With several members of the now largely irrelevant Kennedy family endorsing the most radically left-wing, least experienced candidate in this year’s race for president, perhaps it is time to introduce some reason into the ridiculous argument that Barack Hussein Obama is the new John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

JFK supported tax cuts, knowing they would spur economic growth. BHO thinks he can somehow tax us into prosperity.

JFK was a foreign policy hawk who stood up to the Soviet Union and let it be known that the United States of America was a superpower to be reckoned with. BHO is a foreign policy wimp whose proclivity toward appeasement in a very dangerous world would signal weakness to our enemies and invite them to attack us.

JFK told us to ask what we could do for our country. BHO tells us to expect that our country will do everything for us.

JFK was a genuine hero who very nearly died in World War II. The closest BHO has ever gotten to a war zone was when he was working as a “community organizer” on the mean streets of Chicago.

By the time JFK was elected to the presidency, he had already served six years in the U.S. House of Representatives and eight years in the U.S. Senate. BHO spent a few years in the Illinois State Legislature and lost a bid for a U.S. House seat before winning the 2004 U.S. Senate race. He spent one year in the senate before launching a bid for the presidency.

It is impossible to imagine JFK endorsing the radical idea that homosexuals should be allowed to marry each other, or even have the rights of marriage, as BHO believes.

It is also impossible to imagine JFK supporting the murder of the unborn. BHO’s position goes much further.

With terrorism and the economy taking center stage in our politics, it was relatively easy for most Americans to allow the tragic 35th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade to slip past them on the 22nd of last month. One third of a generation — fifty million Americans — are not here because of this holocaust, and two generations now have no memory of a nation without legalized murder of the unborn.

For various political and financial reasons, today’s Democrats — and far too many Republicans — are invested in keeping abortion legal in the United States. But few Americans with a conscience are willing to allow abortionists the right to kill a baby up to and beyond the moment of birth.

Barack Obama is.

Back in 2006, in a column about Barack Obama titled, “The Most Dangerous Man in America,” I wrote, “Most important to the liberal extremists who run the Democratic Party, this man’s moderate demeanor would successfully belie his leftist political ideology.”

A few weeks ago, in a piece about moderate, pro-life Democrat Sen. Ben Nelson, D-NE, endorsing Obama for president, I pointed out that Obama was the most radically left-wing member of the United States Senate on the issue of the sanctity of life. As it becomes increasingly possible that this man could become president, it is time to examine the ramifications of Obama’s position on the issue.

Jill Stanek, formerly a registered nurse at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois, led the fight in that state to stop the practice of killing babies born alive during an abortion. She testified in favor of legislation in the Illinois State Legislature that would give protection to such children. Barack Obama, then a state senator, opposed it.

When a similar piece of legislation worked its way through the U.S. Senate, even Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer voted for it. These are among the most liberal, pro-abortion leaders in the Democratic Party, and they concluded that protection of a child who survives an abortion was no threat to Roe vs. Wade. Not so BHO. He believes an abortionist should have the right to kill a baby after he or she has been born!

In this relativistic brave new world in which we now live, how long would it take medical science to begin experimentation or organ harvesting on newborns if BHO had had his way?

To paraphrase the late Lloyd Bentsen, on virtually any issue you can name, but especially on the issue of life, BHO is no JFK.

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© Copyright 2008 by Doug Patton

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Doug Patton is a freelance columnist who has served as a political speechwriter and public policy advisor. His weekly columns are published in newspapers across the country and on selected Internet web sites, including Human Events Online, TheConservativeVoice.com and GOPUSA.com, where he is a senior writer and state editor. Readers may e-mail him at dougpatton@cox.net.