Below is my column in the New York Post on the withdrawal of Robert Kennedy, Jr. from the presidential race and his endorsement of former President Donald Trump. Kennedy’s speech resonated with many long-time Democrats who have found themselves estranged from the party. While Kennedy remains an independent, it is a cautionary tale that is being missed in the “joy” theme of the Democratic National Convention. The fact is that new Republicans are often not the product of ideology and association but anxiety and exclusion. Democrats make Republicans.
Here is the column:
The withdrawal of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from the presidential race and his endorsement of former President Donald Trump was yet another extraordinary moment in an election that has been anything but predictable.
Only a year ago, it would have been unthinkable that a sitting president would be effectively forced off a ticket and replaced by a candidate who did not secure a single vote for president.
Now, the nephew of John F. Kennedy and son of the Robert F. Kennedy has not just withdrawn from the Democratic Party but endorsed the Republican nominee.
Amidst all of the claimed “joy” of the Democratic National Convention, there is a sobering reality that is being ignored by the ecstatic press and pundits: this is how Democrats make Republicans.
There is an old expression that “a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged.”
Irving Kristol explained the neoconservative movement was built by Democrats “mugged by reality.”
Kennedy has not become a Republican but rather joined the roughly half of Americans now identifying as independents. While this country is solidly under the hold of a duopoly of power in the two main parties, only 25% of the country identify as Democrats, and 25% as Republicans.
Kennedy’s departure from the Democrats has been mocked in the press. However, when he spoke on his withdrawal, many of us who have been lifetime members of the party identified with his remarks.
I come from a politically active liberal Democratic family in Chicago. I spent much of my life working for liberals since I first came to Washington as a Democratic House page in the 1970s. I did stints on the Hill or on campaigns with Democrats ranging from Rep. Sid Yates (Ill.) to Sen. William Proxmire (Wis.) to Mo Udall (Arz.). I even worked on the campaign and ran for delegate for RFK Jr.’s uncle, Sen. Ted Kennedy.
Then the party changed. Where once they defended free speech, Democrats have rallied behind censorship and blacklisting of those with opposing views. They have sought to block dozens of Republicans from ballots, including former President Trump. To make matters worse, they have done so in the supposed name of democracy.
Those actions were raised by Kennedy in his powerful and poignant withdrawal speech. He detailed how the Democratic party moved to stop him from running against President Biden in the primary, including efforts to block him from ballots. It was an ironic moment. After harassing candidates like RFK and Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips, the Democratic leadership then simply installed their choice at the convention in an unprecedented bait-and-switch.
There could have been a substantive primary that exposed the diminished mental state of Biden and allowed for a democratic choice on the best nominee. Instead, the Democrats prevented such choices from being made and selected a leader with all of the transparency and deliberation of a party Congress in China.
Kennedy said that the Democratic Party has virtually shoved him and other voters into the arms of Donald Trump and the Republican Party.
Kennedy observed that “I began this journey as a Democrat, the party of my father, my uncle, the party which I pledged my own allegiance to long before I was old enough to vote.”
He said that his party was the one that championed free speech, government transparency, and opposed unjust wars. “True to its name, it was the party of democracy.”
He said that the party has turned its back on all of the values that once defined it. For former Democrats like Kennedy, running on “joy” is no substitute for these profound changes in the party.
Indeed, the DNC bordered on the creepy as speaker after speaker sold the idea that, if voters could just swallow the Harris candidacy, they would immediately experience joy like some political prozac commercial.
It is not clear whether the red pill/blue pill pitch will be enough, or whether Kennedy’s endorsement will turn the critical votes in swing states.
However, the DNC showed how Democrats make Republicans. The unrelenting identity politics and claims of defending democracy (while opposing democratic choice) only reaffirmed for many that there is no longer a big tent in the party of Roosevelt and Kennedy.
There is a serious question whether John F. Kennedy would recognize or support the current Democratic Party. It now rejects many of his core, mainstream values.
His nephew highlighted the irony of how the party not only worked to block the ability of opponents to challenge President Biden but worked to “conceal the cognitive decline of the sitting president.”
Even the Washington Post recently admitted that “the 81-year-old had shown signs of slipping for a long time, but his inner circle worked to conceal his decline.”
However, the Post failed to note that Vice President Kamala Harris was part of that inner circle. Indeed, she has been touting her close work with Biden in her campaign.
There is little recognition that, if true, it means that Harris, the White House, and leading Democrats lied to the public about Biden’s mental decline for their own political interests.
For Kennedy, it was all too much “and, most sadly … in the name of saving Democracy, the Democratic Party set itself to dismantling it, lacking confidence in its candidate, that its candidate could win in a fair election at the voting booth.”
There is little “joy” in that.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon & Schuster).
I posted a link to this column on my Facebook page and received a notice today that the link had been removed because it was considered “spam.” I have appealed the removal. These people have no shame.
Words from RFK Jr’s campaign manager and daughter in law —>
@amaryllisfox
“For those asking how, as a former Democrat, I could support Robert F Kennedy Jr’s endorsement of President Trump, please try to consider the following with an open mind:
Tens of millions more Americans slipped into poverty on the Biden/Harris watch, with 2022 sending more Americans into poverty than any year for the last half century. More Americans were incarcerated, became homeless, committed suicide, and died of overdoses under Harris compared with Trump. Hundreds of thousands more people around the world died from war and violence. The nuclear clock moved closer to midnight last year than at any time since its creation in the 1940s.
By virtually every measure of impact on regular people’s everyday lives, the Democratic Party has failed.
The only categories in which they remain clear winners are speechwriting, marketing, shaming anyone who dares consider an alternative, weaponizing the courts, and controlling both the mainstream media and domestic intelligence services.
Give it time. If you haven’t seen this already, you will.
I too was a lifelong Democrat, but the truth is that the party I believed in no longer exists. It’s like saying you still trust Boeing because it was a trustworthy brand in the 90s. Since then, all the key personnel and parts have been switched out to maximize profit with minimal concern for the people they serve and catastrophic results. Boeing still has its same brand name, as do the Democrats, but everything under the hood has been cheapened and broken for personal gain.
There is too much at stake in this election to vote for a team jersey, slogans or vibes.
Harris talks about lifting up working people and yet has overseen a record slide into poverty.
She talks about democracy but Zuckerberg just confirmed her White House put undue pressure on FB to censor American speech.
She talks about making insulin affordable while allowing food companies to mass poison our people with addictive chemicals illegal in Europe, creating the very obesity epidemic that requires that insulin in the first place.
She talks about affordable housing, having printed hundreds of billions of inflationary dollars to send weapons to ukraine, producing the very rate hikes and supply chain disruptions that have made the housing shortage so acute.
She talks about choice over one’s body while threatening to deprive Americans of their income if they do not submit to an experimental vaccine that does not prevent transmission.
She talks about protecting the climate but her Administration blew up the Nord Stream pipeline, generating more emissions than any other event in recent history.
She talks about believing women but advocates for them to be silenced the moment they describe their babies’ autism experience.
She calls for economic recovery while proposing price controls and taxes on unrealized gains that will cripple innovation and investment for decades into our shared future.
Look, buying a product based on appealing packaging once is an understandable mistake. But if that product then made you sicker, poorer, and less safe, would the deceptive branding really convince you to buy it all over again?
Letting go can be hard, especially in the face of peer pressure and social bubbles. But no brand loyalty is worth four more years of censorship, poverty, and war.
MAHA x MAGA is for any American who puts their neighbor and their country over their brand affinity for a party that demands their blind loyalty while failing their most urgent daily needs. 🇺🇸❤️”
Aug 28, 2024
..a final observation to support Prof. Turley’s commentary to-day: as nothing in this world is truly accidental, but has meaning in the bigger Synchronicity: that piece of toilet paper falling out of Pelosi’s pants when walking to the podium to speak surely is ‘a sign………’of the present-day Dem Party going down the toilet…
HOW TRUE, spot on, Prof. Turley.. as a youngster I worked on RFK’s campaign in ’68 with my Dad.. listening to the radio when the assassination gunshot came thru.. I thought the radio had exploded… I’ve been saying for 3 years that we have a Manchurian Candidate in the WH.. perhaps programmed all that time in the basement.. I’ve heard some call Mr. O ‘the anti-Christ..’ I’ve seen a Dramatic transformation in Hillary whose hand I once squeezed when the Clintons were Classic Liberals.. I watched Bill Clinton give a ‘painful’ DNC speech, barely looked up from his notes, in contrast to his smiling, animated, pouring out energy, brilliant, no notes, ad libbing self… too many are stuck in the ‘Soros-Obama’ inspired matrix.. ready to be led to slaughter… Yes I had to become an I.. and I am solidly part of the new ‘Unity’ coalition behind DT.. and perhaps it’s time we got rid of the strict 2 party system which allows the kind of hijacking we’ve witnessed to happen… .
Maybe this explains why so many Republicans have left the Republican party since the orange poopyhead took it over.
The orange head you speak of took a bullet for you. But keep on getting brainwashed. It’s good for you.
..another poopy comment from the resident troll anonymous from the darkside..
Do Democrats make Republicans because they’re more willing to do that than make Greens, or Socialists, or supporters of other more people-oriented parties/movements?
I was a college student during the 1967-1968 school year, from Sept. ’67 through June ’68 —-
I was not especially ‘political’ but a number of my friends and associates were.
We hosted the Berrigan brothers in the fall —
The TET offensive in early Feb. 1968 was quite a change in the War —
I left out the October, 1967 assassination of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara in Bolivia but the campus knew about it and generally believed our CIA was behind it —
March, 1968 — LBJ announces he’s no longer a candidate for the Nov. ’68 election — opening the field up to RFK., Gene McCarthy, and others —-
April —- MLK, Jr. assassinated in Memphis — had it been during a hot summer, riots would have prevailed —
June —-RFK, assassinated in Los Angeles after a huge ‘win’ in California —
It was a huge year for significant ‘events’ —-
But….the beat went on — the election was held, Nixon beat Humphrey (a lousy substitute for an RFK, but he was dead),
Fast forward to the Spring of 2024: the power brokers of the Democrat Party select a candidate and boot out old Joe Biden —
the whiplash was painful — even Republicans couldn’t believe was Democrat voters were allowing them to get away with —
Except RFK, Jr.—-apparently the last Kennedy from that original era who remembers when a Democrat meant something far different than today’s power-hungry butt-kissing subordinate to the true power brokers, such as Pelosi, Obama, Schumer, and a lot of unnamed individuals working hard behind the scenes to ‘undo’ true freedom in America this election year..
..good to know we’re contemporaries and this perspective adds so much gravitas to the conversation!
If you want to read the full text from which Dennis McIncrier PLAGIARIZED his comment below, adding only the words “John Say” to make it his own, go here.
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000065575
Just in case you thought for one second that the pathetic pinhead had a coherent thought of his own, or knows jack about African history.