Krauthammer brushes against but wisely defers exploration of one of the right's favorite bugaboos, Kennedy's stolen presidential election:
Vice-presidential picks ... haven’t had a decisive influence since Lyndon Johnson carried Texas for John Kennedy in 1960. (That and Illinois put Kennedy over the top.)
A brush is all it takes, though, to stir the indignation of still-smarting Nixonites. If only that diabolical Chicago machine hadn't raised the dead to flock to the polls, we would have experienced the horror of a Nixon presidency eight years earlier. (Well, that's not exactly how they put it, but you see what I mean.)
Ohio State's Professor of History David Stebenne writes:
In Illinois, the most recent and fair-minded study (Kallina’s Kennedy v. Nixon) concludes that sufficient evidence does not exist to determine whether Chicago’s Democratic machine stole more votes there than Republicans did downstate.
Furthermore, Illinois alone would not have turned the election to Nixon. He needed more than that.
Yet on the right the bugaboo persists: Kennedy stole Illinois, hence the White House. The right, you see, always wins honestly, and never loses legitimately.
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