Reply #5: That's a good point - there are a number of potential answers to your

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question, but nothing definitive.

I feel much more sure of the fact that JFK was shot from the front (because of the medical evidence) that of what the reasons were for doing it.

Perhaps I should have said "probable right wing coup" instead of just "right wing coup".

For one thing, Johnson at the time was considered to be a lot more conservative than he turned out to be. It was believed by many that Kennedy was going to pull us out of Viet Nam, and so one theory was that that was why he was assassinated.

Another issue was the oil depletion allowance that Kennedy was probably going to try to do away with. This would have cut deeply into the pockets of the big oil interests, whom Johnson had strong ties with.

I think that the bottom line is that a lot of right wing interests were at stake and they thought that Johnson would probably be a lot more friendly to their interests (and in some respects he probably was) than Kennedy. And besides that, Kennedy was extremely popular, thought to be almost certain to be re-elected, and perhaps would have been very good for the Democratic party in general in the long run. I think that the right wing was a lot more fearful of Kennedy than they were of Johnson.