RFK Jr. burned his bridges and goes all in
RFK Jr.’s family has been issuing statements disavowing him before, so this sort of thing is really nothing new for him.
Now RFK has said something quite eloquent about MAGA, that slogan that has been practically considered the equivalent of Heil Hitler by the Democrats. Here it is:
What "MAGA" really means
The phrase has troubled liberals who think it is a call for a return to an America before civil rights, gay rights, and women's rights. But I have a more generous interpretation, one that is truer to my experience of Donald Trump as he is today. "Make…
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) August 25, 2024
The phrase has troubled liberals who think it is a call for a return to an America before civil rights, gay rights, and women’s rights. But I have a more generous interpretation, one that is truer to my experience of Donald Trump as he is today. “Make America Great Again” recalls a nation brimming with vitality, with a can-do spirit, with hope and a belief in itself. It was an America that was beginning to confront its darker shadows, could acknowledge the injustice in its past and present, yet at the same time could celebrate its successes. It was a nation of broad prosperity, the world’s most vibrant middle class, and a idealistic belief (though not consistently applied) in freedom, justice, and democracy. It was a nation that led the world in innovation, productivity, and technology. And it was the healthiest country in the world. I have talked to many Trump supporters. I have talked with his inner circle. I have talked to the man himself. This is the America they want to restore.
Kennedy is also suggesting that more Democrats will be coming into the fold of what he calls Trump’s Unity Government:
This is only the beginning. Wait till you see the next additions to President Trump’s Unity Government. #UniteAmerica #MAHA https://t.co/bkUM5QhcQP
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) August 25, 2024
Perhaps Tulsi Gabbard? This is getting even more interesting. I’ll take any good news I can get.
I just saw this post on Red State – a DNC volunteer went home feeling very disillusioned.
https://redstate.com/beckynoble/2024/08/26/dnc-volunteer-finally-gets-it-says-she-cannot-support-kamala-not-sure-if-she-is-still-a-democrat-n2178549
And, I saw that Tulsi has endorsed Trump.
https://redstate.com/bobhoge/2024/08/26/full-circle-former-democrat-presidential-candidate-tulsi-gabbard-endorses-trump-n2178556
Yes Tulsi Gabbard- she just made an appearance with Trump at today’s rally here in Michigan. For what it’s worth, she was my first choice for VP, although I’m getting to like JD Vance more and more.
That tweet should be a voiceover campaign ad. Images from the real USA, flyover country.
Am probably too positive in my humble life – which may be the reason that I visit here often.
Live moves on…seemingly faster as it attempts to keep up with the even faster technological advances.
Changes ain’t going to stop happening – best to just drop the Metathesiophobia and move on with the change. Like—don’t swim against the current in an attempt to cross the river – best to just go with the flow.
Sam Cooke – A Change Is Gonna Come
Actually, it means get democRATS out of office.
Health Moms, RFK jr and a turn to Trump?
“Everyone says that Donald Trump needs to recruit suburban women voters. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. may be his secret weapon. We used to hear about soccer moms, but RFK, Jr. may be able to mobilize a new group, the Health Moms.”
https://instapundit.substack.com/p/out-soccer-moms-and-security-moms?r=9bg2k&triedRedirect=true
And here i thought being a rino was bad. Its one thing to get an endorsement, taking on tulsi and rfk into the admin is madness if you think the prev trump admin was ‘sabotaged’
Liz has been ahead of me twice today. Glenn Reynolds makes a good point about health-conscious mothers. I don’t agree with RFK Jr. about routine childhood vaccinations, but I do agree with him about the corruption in the government health agencies. I no longer automatically trust government “authorities,” and neither, probably, do a lot of these women who follow RFK Jr.
If the Dems had allowed RFKjr to run in the primaries they probably wouldn’t have this problem.
Of course. Liberals assume that those who disagree with them are EEVUL.
Wow! That was absolutely great and spot on!
Better than anything native Nebraskan Ted Sorensen ever wrote for JFK.
Israel,
Maybe the time is ripe for such a coalition. I could support Gabbard and RFK in certain positions. The danger is driving people like yourself away from Trump.
The Ds ran Biden as the unifier, and of course look what actually happened. They’ve exposed themselves as true leftists/ communists. And there may be more people like the old Joe Liebermans, Zell Millers, while classical Demcrats, still actually care about the country. Can they overcome their TDS? And can GOPers overcome their hatred of all registered Democrats?
The most bizarre election in my 72 yrs.
Even though Tulsi Gabbard left the Democratic Party a couple of years ago and is now an independent, I think this counts. After all, she spent three years as vice-chair of the DNC, was a three-term Democratic member of Congress, and was a Democratic presidential candidate during the 2020 primaries. And, as some will already know, she has been helping President Trump prepare to debate Vice President Harris. (It was Tulsi who finally torpedoed Kamala’s dismal 2020 candidacy during a debate in August 2019.)
Tulsi Gabbard recently discovered that she has been a target of surveillance by the TSA’s “Quiet Skies” program. Just disgraceful. As if it wasn’t already enough that Hillary Clinton had called her a “Russian asset.”
I am so happy to see that she has endorsed President Trump.
Cornhead @ 5:35 pm,
I disagree. I liked, “Profiles in Courage.”
I totally get where israel’s coming from: it’s good news for the short term that people like RFK Jr and Gabbard will make common cause with Trump. Trump’s election would also be good news for the short term.
But in the long term, a coalition of the center-right and center-left is just going to end up center-left, which is how we got here in the first place. The center-left has no enemies to the Left and the center-right has no friends to the Right.
If Trump wins there is a lot of work that needs to be done to ensure that we’re not just doing this all over again in ten years. When you’ve earned a breathing space you have to do more with it than just breathe.
thousands standing around, do they do anything useful, they were instituted because argenbright failed, but have they been any better at stopping actual plots
the premise of sorenson’s speech, that we are the servants of the state, instead of them serving as our servants, was problematic, maybe the peace corps and say vista had some use, similarly ‘we will be bear any burden, support any hardship,
oppose any foe’ was a rather open ended engagement, of course three months later, they as much said ever mind, to 1200 men, who took that statement seriously, then in blind ignorance stumbled into a quagmire 5,000 miles away, a similar misgauging happened two generations later, well quite nearly
‘war is the health of the State’ was that Randolph Bourne, who said it, but did it really save the nation, after two decades in the Stans, one can’t argue it did much for the UK, in fact the corresponding influx has certainly weakened the foundation, similar patterns seem to be recurring here, 15 minutes into the future, ‘who won the war’
as James Lileks pondered in a column, around the time when they treating the Koran with kid gloves, but they were burning Bibles in Afghanistan, ‘well obviously we lost the war’that was about 18 years ago, when armies of the Taliban and other splinters of the Brotherhood have free access in every major city, it’s hard to conclude otherwise,
Trump is certainly a heterodox candidate but those with the Tory blue stamp have done not much good,
in an ideal world, maybe men (and women) should not be entirely preoccupied with private pursuits, but that ship sailed in an era of multi trillion dollar budget which swamp the real economy, it was a gradual process as some other wag said ‘slowly then all at once’ at first there was a cost shifting of some industries to off shore locals, this started in the 70s, escalated in the 80s and 90s, for those promised ‘service’ and financial jobs, well that wasn’t the way we became a preeminent power Some Democrats noted this, then dropped the ball, looking for the big shiny, so the prized industry went to our one time regional rival Mexico,
to our most diligent enemy, China, as far back as Trump made his first real political outing in the 80s he was focused on that question, but the Cold War got in the way,
then these other minutia got in the way,
then the trade deals, with China which were not reciprocated,
of course the withering of the industrial base, hit working class Americans of all kinds most severely, but the political class
pretended not to notice, waiving shiny baubles around,
Europe made similar tradeoff, including the UK, which imported people from theit common wealth, because they had a sense of ennui
too many wars, too many wasted lives, of course the apparat was all to willing to water down the Cultural identity, the foundational cornerstones because well thats old fashioned, so it became Airstrip one almost without realizing it, the Brexit or Independence Movement tried to remedy it, but it was stymied by the Courts, by the bureaucracy,
Israel,
Maybe the time is ripe for such a coalition. I could support Gabbard and RFK in certain positions. The danger is driving people like yourself away from Trump.
in many ways both Raegan and Trumps policies were closer to JFKs than to Ford and Bush’s. Yes Bush/Ford had the prune faced women and the corporate types. The corporate types who never hesitated to offshore have moved from Bush/Ford to Clinton/Obama/Ho and the blue color JFK voters are now in Trumps coalition. Ill take that trade
Seeing what the Kennedy clan have to say about their own flesh and blood, one trembles to think what they have in mind for the rest of us.
well heretics must be shamed, so as to prevent any adherents
they drove Tulsi out of the party, they effectively proscribed rfk jr, they made it impossible for Elon to run his companies effectively in California, if they could they would do to him what they just did to Durov, whose offense was to provide an open platform for Samizdat forces, he founded Vkonte, the Russian Facebook and Putin took it over, he then went on to Telegram, which provides perhaps the only real dissident social media platform of long reach, on issues like election integrity or the wars in the Caucasus and the Middle East, until Elon bought Twitter and liberated it,
they don’t really care about Freedom of Speech, they just want their Eloi claxons on about the Vaccines or the various Blue Anon schemes they have perpetuated for years
so now they complain ‘when the water finds it’s level’
RFK made it clear that there are still major differences between himself and Trump. What he talked about are not left-wing ideas, though. He talked about making elections actually “democratic” again, and about reining in the corrupt health authorities.
On the debate front, now Harris, who insisted that Trump keep the Sept. 10 ABC agreement he’d made with Biden, now wants to change the rules in her favor. She’d like to sit down instead of stand, she wants to have notes, and she wants the mics open all the time, presumably so she can screech about how “she’s talking now,” which is one of her ploys. I hope Trump stands with the original plan.
yes that’s the deal she made, she has her deeply conflicted moderator who will be likely be running interference for her, Stephanopolous or Muir of the Scott Woman,
we saw in the Convention how little they care about policies they ostensibly espouse so it has to be maskirovna, why do they import all their concepts from Russia
the fake sgt major who let his city burn, the ‘prosecutor’ who helped turn California into a dumpster fire, the Hamas Al Queda glee club,* correspondingly the denial of biological science, the absense of simple human decency or humanity, the actions of the Pritzker scion and his Duma in Illinois is another example, the black crow in Albany,
Gondor calls for aid.
And Rohan will answer.
I don’t know about “health moms.” Women who are still wearing masks think of themselves as “health moms” and aren’t voting for Trump. Those who are better informed about COVID and the vaccines are most likely already voting for Trump. Will Kennedy bring hardcore anti-vaxxers to Trump? Or would they be more likely to go to Stein or West?
In any event, the recognition of Trump as a unifier is overdue. One of the things I liked about him was that he wasn’t a cookie cutter movement conservative, but had broader appeal to people outside of the conservative tent. That had a downside as well, but not more of one than other Republican nominees have had.
Gondor calls for aid.
And Rohan will answer.
Steve (retired/recovering lawyer):
Love that!
RFK Jr. burned his bridges and goes all in
It’s 2024, baby!
Is it too soon for idioms about bridges when discussing the Kennedy clan?
A poem I memorized in second or third grade:
Niketas said:
That is really fine and worthy of remembrance.
Rufus, that was a fantastic thing to memorize in grade school! I think it works even better when read in a Boston accent, too.
@ Kate > “I no longer automatically trust government “authorities,” and neither, probably, do a lot of these women who follow RFK Jr.”
Yeah, me neither.
Good comment on the credibility of “authority” here:
https://www.thenewneo.com/2024/08/24/commenter-aesopfan-explains-my-own-position-vis-a-vis-liberal-democrat-friends-and-family-for-the-most-part/#comment-2758200
Sarah Hoyt on the topic last week, as prologue to a particularly bad example of putting “experts” in charge of something:
https://accordingtohoyt.com/2024/08/21/the-illusion-of-control/
The questions I would pose about the credibility of any “authoritative” person or institution:
Who pronounced them an “authority” and what is THEIR own authority to do so?
How did the “authority” gain the expertise to serve in a specific field?
What are the boundaries of the “authority’s” control, and is the person or institution staying inside the lines?
Does the “authority” have biases that would influence them to act contrary to what their expertise (if genuine) should dictate?
Speaking of burning bridges… I’m sure most here will get the reference.
_____________________
All the burning bridges
That have fallen after me
All the lonely feelings
And the burning memories
Everyone I left behind
Each time I closed the door
Burning bridges lost forevermore
–“Kelly’s Heroes – Theme Song HD (Burning Bridges)”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgeIINs1TrQ
_____________________
What a weird, wondrous movie, perfect in its way.
Neo
Maureen Callahan’s book “Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed” has a chapter about RFK, Jr. He drove his wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy (the mother of his 4 children) to commit suicide via her hanging herself. This was after he impoverished her to the point where she had to beg neighbors for $20 to fill up her car. He got into a fight with Mary Richardson’s family about where she should be buried declaring that she was going to be buried in the Kennedy family plot and he buried her there and the next day or so without a court warrant had her body dug up and buried on a hill top without a marker and facing traffic.
BrooklynBoy:
I’m well aware of the tragic story of RFK Jr.’s ex-wife and her suicide. I am not an RFK Jr. supporter and have never said his life is exemplary. However, I believe he has been politically persecuted by the Democrats through lawfare and I think Trump was wise to court his support.
As far as her suicide goes, there is little doubt in my mind that his unfaithfulness and their separation was an important factor in that tragic event. But plenty of people experience a spouse’s infidelity and don’t kill themselves – fortunately. She had other problems as well – substance abuse, for example.
@AesopFan: “How did the “authority” gain the expertise to serve in a specific field?” This brings to mind the adage that when someone claims to have 20 years of experience, perhaps the counter is that he actually had 1 year of experience repeated 20 times.
I don’t hear much about management theories any more, but I have long felt it was wise policy to move a prospective executive/manager laterally to a peer dept. or group, maybe two or three times, before promoting them to cover those same depts. Greater exposure to roles, missions, people, etc. and gets his allegiance looking up towards the benefit of the whole organization (and its customers) rather than just around his former local patch.
@ R2L > “he actually had 1 year of experience repeated 20 times.”
I’ve seen that framed as an employment interview question: “Do you really have x years experience, or 1 year repeated x times?”
I wonder if any actual interviewers ever used it?
Your prescription for preparing managers is astute. IMO one of the biggest problems with companies today, especially large ones, is bringing in MBAs and outsiders to run the place, instead of people who have spent time learning about the business from the inside and the bottom up.
I note that Donald Trump made his kids do maintenance work on the family vacation home, and IIRC had them learn the ropes of his business as well.
Might have to check on that.
NOTE: My Brave browser search for “trump vacation home kids jobs” turns up nothing on the first page addressing that topic, but several posts about Biden’s vacations, job listings at one of his resorts, generic advice for parents, and Kamala’s family history. I know I read a post about the subject not too long ago.