Thinking back to the 2016 Johnson-Weld Libertarian Party ticket, I think Nicole Shanahan is clearly closer to being a real libertarian than former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld was, and that Kennedy might be as close to being a real libertarian as former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson was. For example, RFK Jr. strikes me as truly caring about getting us out of NATO. It’s true that RFK Jr is no libertarian isolationist when it comes to Israel, but that seems to me such a tiny country as to be a secondary issue when it comes to the anti-having-allies position of the libertarian platform. And when it comes to freedom to infect others with contagious diseases, Kennedy and Shanahan are perfect libertarians.
RFK Jr was an existential threat to the Libertarian Party because there was a slight chance he would be seen as having bigly won the debates, and then actually win the presidency. Kennedy then would have had to ignore his libertarian ties, working with whatever party or parties controlled Congress. But I think this is also true of the now presumptive Libertarian Party nominee, Chase Oliver – except for the fact that the chances of Oliver winning in November is zero. With no congressional delegation, a third party candidate can never succeed in our system.
Abe Lincoln, the first Republican president, was a moderate who over and over assured the south that even though he didn’t like slavery, he wouldn’t interfere with it in states where it was already established. Without radical Republicans in Congress pushing him to stay true to their principles, even a Lincoln could not have been a Lincoln.
One of the moderators is probably already pissed that I brought up this old chestnut in a Kennedy thread.
What I might have better said that in the only two examples in U.S. history where a new-party president was elected — William Henry Harrison as a Whig, and Abraham Lincoln as a Republican — big congressional delegations for the new president’s party preceded the presidential win. The president-first approach, for a new party, makes no sense, in the U.S. system, because you need congressional support for your program.
Are the worms a proven diagnosis? I keep reading that two neurosurgeons agreed it was a tumor, but then a third guy, who had not been contacted, called out of the blue to say it’s this other thing and this other thing does not require surgery. This almost sounds like an excuse not to have surgery.
Kennedy says that docs disagreed on that. But since he has not released medical records, it is not even proven that a single physician gave that as the diagnosis. I wouldn’t be surprised if Kennedy was told that a larvae, which would be a worm as an adult, was a possibility and jumped to the conclusion that it is definite.
Based on this article, the symptoms Kennedy reported (“brain fog”) are not generally associated with having worm in your brain:
Imagine the sort of person who thinks telling everyone worms ate part of his brain is a desirable thing. Now imagine that person running for President.
According to the report in the N.Y. Times, the brain worm story was revealed by RFK Jr. in a deposition during divorce proceedings, and was intended to show that his wormy brain limited his earnings potential.* So it doesn’t look like he’s been bragging about Das Worm, in fact it conflicts with the image he’s cultivated of a weight-lifting, vital, young (or at least less ancient than his competitors) falconer.
*his foggy brain didn’t prevent him from earning multi-millions from court actions, books and of course “Children’s Health Defense”.
