Republicans are wrong to try to strengthen the position and stature of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in today’s political climate. Whatever tactical advantage the GOP thinks it can gain by supporting Kennedy’s bid for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination will be outweighed by the damage done to the GOP’s reputation, as well as to the overall political discourse, through the dissemination of Kennedy’s toxic political and conspiratorial views.
It’s easy to see why the GOP wants to bolster Kennedy’s quest for the presidency. Kennedy has no chance of wresting the Democratic presidential nomination from Joe Biden. Yet his efforts may well weaken Biden’s chances for re-election. Following brutal primary challenges, both Harry Truman in 1952 and Lyndon Johnson in 1968 decided to retire rather than continue fighting for renomination and re-election. William Howard Taft (1912), Herbert Hoover (1932), Gerald Ford (1976), Jimmy Carter (1980), and George H. W. Bush (1992) all overcame vigorous primary challenges to win renomination, only to go down to defeat in their respective general elections. The GOP hopes that a strong challenge to Biden from Kennedy will so weaken Biden that he, too, will lose the 2024 general election to Donald Trump or whomever else the GOP might nominate. To that end, Republican congressmen invited Kennedy to air his views last week at a hearing on whether federal bureaucratic agencies are being “weaponized” by the Biden Administration to persecute its political appointments, and whether Republican donors are helping finance Kennedy’s ongoing presidential campaign.
But Kennedy’s views are frequently outrageous, vile, and poisonous. For example, he has claimed that:
- Vaccines are not only ineffective, but cause autism;
- The CIA helped assassinate his uncle;
- Someone other than Sirhan Sirhan is responsible for the murder of his father;
- The GOP stole the 2004 presidential election;
- The Covid-19 virus was designed to target Blacks and Whites, while sparing the Chinese and Ashkenazi Jews (Jews of central or eastern European decent, comprising about 80% of the total Jewish population.
This last claim is perhaps the most sickening, as well as the most dangerous, to both the Chinese and the Jews. China deserves the condemnation of the civilized world for its treatment of the Uighurs, its suppression of Tibet and Hong Kong, its ongoing threats to Taiwan, and its refusal to fully cooperate with investigations into the origins of Covid-19. But to suggest that the Covid-19 virus was somehow genetically engineered and deliberately deployed to spare the Chinese while infecting most of the rest of the world is a monstrous accusation for which not the slightest shred of evidence has been produced. In the past, I’ve argued that it is not racist to criticize China for its policies, and fears of violence against Asian-Americans do not justify the suppression of honest debates on China. but in this case, an undocumented charge of the deliberate creation and release of a virus designed to sicken and kill everyone but the Chinese is clearly racist and may well provoke a rise in violence against Asian Americans if not vigorously discredited and refuted.
And the charge that the virus was designed to spare Jews at the expense of everyone else (other than the Chinese) is nothing if not anti-Semitic. Kennedy does not call for reprisals against the Jews, but Jews would be perfectly justified in believing that Kennedy’s assertions could now be added to the other charges made by anti-Semites—that Jews kill Christian babies for their blood, that Jews are planning to take over the world, etc., ad nauseam—to justify their persecution.
The injection of Kennedy’s ravings into the ongoing political debates only cheapens and demeans our discourse while adding to the dangers confronting the Chinese, the Jews, to anyone deterred from taking lifesaving vaccines, and to anyone in society who could conceivably be harmed by policy decisions based on sick fantasies rather than reality. And if Republican politicians and donors to Kennedy’s campaign aren’t concerned for the potential damage their support for him may cause, they should at least be concerned with the GOP’s own reputation and the danger they may cause it with their support for dark fantasies. It’s bad enough that many Republicans still believe in stolen elections when they can’t prove the thefts or in the dark fantasies of Q-Anon—Democratic covens wherein witchcraft, cannibalism, child molesting and murder take place. To give Kennedy credence, money, and opportunities to spread his views simply raises more doubts about whether the GOP is a trustworthy and serious political party.
There’s a strong case to be made against the Biden Administration’s irresponsible energy policies, spending profligacy, ineptitude in military strategy and tactics, and acceptance of “woke” ideology and concomitant initiatives. But before the GOP can make the case, it must shed itself of any association with dangerous conspiratorial theories and those who make them. Otherwise, the voters may well question the GOP’s credibility as a champion of reason and reject its candidates at the ballot box while America sinks deeper and deeper into the toxic brew of dark fantasies pushed by radicals in both parties.
Malcolm L. Cross has lived in Stephenville and taught politics and government at Tarleton from 1987 until 2023. His political and civic activities include service on the Stephenville City Council (2000-2014) and on the Erath County Republican Executive Committee (1990 to the present). He was Mayor Pro Tem of Stephenville from 2008 to 2014. He is a member of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and the Stephenville Rotary Club and does volunteer work for the Boy Scouts of America. Views expressed in this column are his and do not reflect those of The Flash as a whole.
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