Tag: US polls

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. | The third runner

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Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. authored ‘A Letter to Liberals’. He feared the “pharma cartel” was manipulating COVID-19 management, and the governments were bullies whose hallmark became “cancel culture”. The 120-page booklet was a lament. The Democratic Party should return to its roots, the storied FDR/JFK liberalism, which “prided itself on its open-minded tolerance of contrary opinion… and its fearless love for contention and disputation”.

RFK Jr., as he is widely known, wants to lead by example. When the Kennedy clan decided to endorse incumbent Joe Biden in the November elections, there was little resentment. “I am pleased they are politically active — it’s a family tradition,” RFK Jr., who is standing in the presidential election as an independent, wrote on X. The 70-year-old might be a namesake to Robert F. Kennedy, the former U.S. Attorney General, but “he does not share the same values, vision or judgment”, according to his siblings. But this does not dishearten RFK Jr. “We are divided in our opinions but united in our love for each other”, and this “healing” is possible for America too.

The Kennedy campaign of 2024 is built on similar contentions and contradictions. He is a Democrat and an environmentalist, spouting anti-vaccine sentiments to a rousing Republican voter base. Fear grows this “spoiler” may peel away votes from Mr. Biden and the Republican nominee Donald Trump. Anything goes, he says, to “break the two-party system”.

A puzzling pitch

RFK Jr. is a political enigma. He wants to “reclaim” the Democratic Party while sustaining links with far-right figures. The Great American Evils are corporate “elites”, says RFK Jr., a millionaire hailing from the Great American Family. He identifies himself as “pro-choice”, but abortion is a “tragedy”. He refutes the anti-vaccine label, before spewing misinformed, debunked ideas that vaccines can cause autism. The Kennedy heir has faith in scientific empiricism, but maintains that COVID-19 is “targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people”.

These claims “play[s] on anti-Semitic myths” and are “morally and factually wrong”, came a counter from his brother Joseph Kennedy II. Before entering politics, RFK Jr., the environmentalist, won legal battles against corporate polluters. Now, he endorses bitcoins, which leave behind a significant carbon footprint, and pitches “freedom and free markets” as a climate solution. His running mate Nicole Shanahan called him the “only anti-war candidate today”; RFK Jr., however, has defended Israel’s “right to self-defence” and opposes a ceasefire in Gaza.

Since 2004, RFK Jr. has distinguished himself as a conspiracy theorist. He believes his uncle Joan F. Kennedy, the former President, was assassinated by “members of the CIA”; the 2004 presidential elections were stolen; mass shootings are linked to prescription drugs; chemicals in water could turn children transgender.

RFK Jr. insists his “populist movement defies left-right division”; the anger and aggression are a distant echo of Mr. Trump’s rabble-rousing politics. The media is a “mercenary” operation, “here to fortify all of the corporate orthodoxies from their advertisers”; the “corporate capture” of the government is the root of American despair. A Politico analysis showed that in the 69 times he has appeared on television since January, nearly half were with conservative or openly ‘anti-woke’ hosts. On immigration, he thinks Mr. Biden has failed to manage the illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border. He has also opposed Mr. Trump’s plan to build a wall, while vowing to “close the border” if elected.

His policies include cutting military expenses, fixing economic inequality, reducing student debt, and freeing the American people from the clutches of Wall Street. Early polls show RFK Jr. holds appeal across political lines, mostly among the younger demographic. He held a favourability rating of +25%; Mr. Biden was at minus 2% and Mr. Trump at +7%, according to a Harvard poll in November last year.

“…the far right and the far left [seem to] wrap around and can coalesce around a candidate like this,” author Melissa Smith told Al Jazeera.

Inconsistencies make for intrigue in the 2024 presidential election bid. History is not kind to third-party candidates, but the Kennedy candidacy could become a “spoiler” in the decidedly close race between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump. To Mr. Trump, RFK Jr. is a “Democrat ‘Plant’” and “far more LIBERAL than anyone running as a Democrat”. The Democratic National Committee has set up a war room to deal with “third-party threats” such as Mr. Kennedy. Polls also show Mr. Trump’s lead over Mr. Biden can widen from anywhere between 2 to 8 points if RFK Jr. stays on the ballot.

The potential spoiler faces pushback from the Kennedy clan. A Kennedy name on the ballot, the siblings fear, would make Democrats feel “torn” between the nephew of former president JFK and the incumbent Mr. Biden, an outcome “perilous” for America’s future. The family is thus bolstering Mr. Biden’s re-election bid: being photographed at the White House; descending on the campaign trail; and stepping up media appearances.

RFK Jr.’s “misguided stands on issues, his poor judgement, and tenuous relationship with the truth” make him unfit for the presidency, his cousin Stephen Kennedy Smith said. There is the added risk to the Kennedy legacy, should RFK Jr. tip the elections in favour of the Republic nominee. The family line is clear: RFK Jr.’s presidential bid is “dangerous to the country”. He is “trading in on Camelot celebrity conspiracy theories and conflict for personal gain and fame,” wrote JFK’s grandson Jack Schlossberg on Instagram (King Arthur’s castle Camelot has become a metaphor for the Kennedy dynasty in his rallies). “Let’s not be distracted again by somebody’s vanity project.”

Distraction is RFK Jr.’s design. To the victor belong the spoils, the saying goes, but the third candidate is happy to set alight the treasures. He wants to “spoil [the race] for both of them [Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden]” and take the ravaged Americans “over the castle walls together”.

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Internal tumult affects Republicans in Michigan with U.S. presidential poll ahead

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A threat of duelling party conventions to choose a presidential nominee this weekend. Accusations of adultery, corruption and incompetence. A barrage of social media attacks and a police investigation.

The Michigan Republican Party is in turmoil, raising fears among some Republicans that support for former President Donald Trump’s re-election bid could suffer in a battleground state that Democratic President Joe Biden won by 2.8 percentage points in 2020.

The fight to oust Kristina Karamo, elected as Republican party chair in Michigan last year, has become increasingly bitter and personal, leaving deep divisions in the local party, according to three dozen party members who spoke to Reuters.

At the centre of that battle is Bree Moeggenberg. The 44-year-old member of the Republican state committee — a governing board for the party in Michigan — helped organise a January 6 vote by some committee members to remove Ms. Karamo.

Ms. Moeggenberg and others blame Ms. Karamo — a fiery grassroots activist who backs Mr. Trump’s false claims of election fraud — for stifling dissent within the party, a lack of transparency in decision-making, and driving away wealthy donors.

The Republican National Committee — which helps to coordinate the party’s fundraising and election strategy across America — ruled in February that Ms. Karamo’s removal was legitimate and recognised Pete Hoekstra, ambassador to the Netherlands during Mr. Trump’s presidency, as the new chair. Mr. Trump has thrown his support behind Mr. Hoekstra.

Ms. Karamo has contested the vote and the rival factions have announced duelling conventions on Saturday to choose a presidential nominee and award delegates to the party’s national convention in July.

Ms. Karamo retains a loyal following among a contingent of the party’s roughly 2,000 precinct delegates and its 107-person state committee, but a court ruling this week affirming her removal as chair has put her convention and future with the party in doubt.

Among Republican activists, the fighting has become personal. Several Karamo supporters and anonymous online trolls have, without evidence, accused Ms. Moeggenberg of having an affair with a married man, Andy Sebolt, another state committee member.

Both Ms. Moeggenberg and Mr. Sebolt deny the allegations. Ms. Moeggenberg has accused Ms. Karamo and her supporters of character assassination. “Such destructive behaviour has been a core cause of division in the party,” she told Reuters.

Ms. Karamo’s signature was on an official email newsletter in January that directed party members to a Telegram messaging chatroom with a series of anonymous posts repeating the adultery allegations, some uploaded days before the crucial party vote.

Ms. Karamo did not respond to a request for comment on the adultery allegations and intra-party strife.

A number of the three dozen party members in Michigan who spoke to Reuters expressed concern that the acrimony risked leaving Republican activists disillusioned and less likely to volunteer or vote. Among the disenchanted are many grass-roots donors Ms. Karamo courted with promises of breaking the party’s reliance on the moneyed elite.

Daniel Harrington, 62, who wrote two $1,776 checks last year in support of Ms. Karamo, says he won’t be donating to the party or helping it get out the vote in November if she is ousted. As precinct delegate, he was planning to participate in Ms. Karamo’s convention in Detroit.

“We’re upset with Trump, absolutely,” said Mr. Harrington, who voted for the former president in 2016 and 2020 but was angry at how he abandoned Ms. Karamo. “I’d like to send a message wherever the convention is going to be to not elect Trump.”

A conservative, Mr. Harrington said he would probably still vote for Mr. Trump in November, if given the choice of him and Democratic President Joe Biden. Mr. Trump won Michigan’s primary convincingly on Tuesday, securing 12 of 16 delegates up for grabs. The remaining 39 of Michigan’s 55 delegates are due to be allocated on Saturday.

The impact of the turmoil within the party has already hit campaign coffers. Donations into a state-level account came to just under $20,000 from the start of Ms. Karamo’s tenure to the end of 2023, down sharply from $690,000 during the same period four years earlier, according to a Reuters review of filings.

Contributions to the state party’s federal account also suffered, with reported fundraising totaling about $900,000 last year, down from about $1.5 million four years earlier in 2019.

Personal divisions

The tensions in Michigan are driven as much by personal animus as any ideology. Ms. Karamo and her supporters describe “establishment” Republicans — those aligned with business interests and traditional donors — as corrupt, and tend to be very conservative in their policy beliefs. The members backing Mr. Hoekstra are also conservative but told Reuters they are willing to work with wealthy donors. They accuse Ms. Karamo of incompetence.

“We’re so very fractured,” said Kelly Sackett, one of two people from the rival factions claiming to be the party chair in Kalamazoo County, where a battle for control has been playing out in courtrooms and police reports. “I don’t see it all coming back together.”

A judge in Kent County, Michigan on Tuesday issued a preliminary injunction saying that Ms. Karamo was properly removed and preventing her from representing herself as chair of the party in Michigan. On Thursday, a three-judge panel of the Michigan Court of Appeals denied Ms. Karamo’s request to suspend Tuesday’s ruling while it weighs her ongoing appeal.

Despite the rulings, Ms. Karamo has yet to call off Saturday’s planned convention in Detroit. Mr. Hoekstra has convened a meeting the same day in Grand Rapids, confident his delegates will be recognised at the national convention in July.

No stranger to controversy

Ms. Moeggenberg, a single mother of three who runs a daycare at her home, is no stranger to controversy. She was until recently chair of the Isabella County chapter of Moms for Liberty, a conservative nonprofit that fought COVID-era mask mandates and teaching about LGBT rights.

When Mr. Sebolt’s wife Jennifer first messaged her privately on Facebook last June accusing her of sleeping with her husband, a tense exchange ensued.

Ms. Jennifer told Reuters she was also upset with her husband for working with Ms. Moeggenberg and others to undermine Ms. Karamo, who she supports. Ms. Jennifer did not provide evidence of an affair.

In July, as Ms. Moeggenberg ramped up pressure on Ms. Karamo, Charles Ritchard, a backer of the embattled chair, started attacking Ms. Moeggenberg and Mr. Sebolt with Facebook posts containing sexual innuendo and unsubstantiated claims of corruption.

Mr. Ritchard told Reuters he targeted Ms. Moeggenberg because she was pressuring others in her district to move against Ms. Karamo.

Following an adultery complaint submitted by Mr. Sebolt’s wife, the state police opened an investigation that prosecutors in both Oceana and Isabella counties declined to pursue, citing a lack of evidence and jurisdictional issues, according to a letter from the Oceana prosecutor on October 9 and police report dated October 10, reviewed by Reuters.

In November, Ms. Jennifer nonetheless went public with adultery allegations against her husband, posting them on Facebook. Other Karamo supporters piled in.

Mr. Hoekstra said he was confident the party would come together to back Mr. Trump and work towards winning a U.S. Senate seat up for grabs in November after the Democratic incumbent announced she would not run. Mr. Hoekstra told Reuters he has spoken with several big donors ready to write checks for the party, once leadership has changed. He did not identify the donors.

Penny Swan, a precinct delegate from the city of Hillsdale, is less sanguine about the party’s prospects.

“Our party is too involved in this turmoil and the fight within the party to do what we’re supposed to be doing: helping candidates and fundraising,” said Penny Swan, a precinct delegate from the city of Hillsdale. “I am absolutely worried.”

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Secular religions of race, sex and climate have put U.S. in chokehold: Vivek Ramaswamy

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Three secular religions — race, sex and climate — have put the U.S. in a chokehold today, Republican presidential aspirant Vivek Ramaswamy has said.

Addressing his fellow conservative Republicans, Mr. Ramaswamy also proposed disruptive ideas of dismantling the Department of Education along with the FBI and banning American companies from doing business with China if he is elected as the president of the country in 2024.

“The Declaration of Independence of today is our declaration of independence from China. If Thomas Jefferson were alive today, that is the Declaration of Independence he would sign. That is the Declaration of Independence I will sign if I am elected as your next president,” Mr. Ramaswamy, 37, said.

Jefferson was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and one of the Founding Fathers of the U.S. He served as the third president of the U.S. from 1801 to 1809 and was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence.

Mr. Ramaswamy, who announced his decision to enter the 2024 race to the White House last week, noted that he was inspired by former president Donald Trump, 76, and his “America first” vision.

It is time to identify the issues and work aggressively towards them, Mr. Ramaswamy said during his address to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) — the top annual event of the Republican Party and its support base— on Saturday.

It was his first major address from the national stage of the CPAC.

In his 18-minute speech, Mr. Ramaswamy said “three secular religions have America in a chokehold today”.

The first of them is this “woke racial religion” that says someone’s identity is based on his skin colour.

“That if you are black, you are inherently disadvantaged. That if you are white, you are inherently privileged no matter your economic background or your upbringing. That your race determines who you are and what you can achieve in life,” Mr. Ramaswamy said.

This has created “this new culture of fear in America”, combined with the “second secular religion” that says the “sex of the person you are attracted to has to be hardwired on the day you were born” but your “own biological sex is completely fluid over the course of your lifetime”.

“It makes no sense unless it is a religion. It does not match up to reason, it matches up to religion. And then it makes the same move as the first religion,” Mr. Ramaswamy said.

The third one is the climate religion in America that says that “we have to fight carbon emissions at all costs in the United States while we shift those same carbon emissions to places like China,” the Indian-American entrepreneur said.

“…Even if you believe in this religion, you would have embraced nuclear energy, which is the best form of carbon-free energy production known to mankind”.

“And yet these people oppose nuclear energy. What is really going on is that the climate religion has about as much to do with the climate as the Spanish Inquisition had to do with Christ, which is to say nothing at all. It is about power, dominion, control, punishment and apologising for what we have achieved in this country and the modern West as we know it,” Mr. Ramaswamy said amidst applause from the audience.

The U.S., he said is in the middle of a national identity crisis.

“Take it from me. I am 37 years old. I am a millennial. I was born in 1985. I will tell you this, my generation, really every generation of Americans today, we are so hungry for a cause.

“We are hungry for purpose and meaning and identity at a point in our national history when the things that used to fill our hunger for purpose, faith, patriotism, hard work, family — these things have disappeared,” Mr. Ramaswamy said.

He said this is an opportunity for the Republican Party and for the conservative movement to rise to the occasion and fill that void with a vision of American national identity that runs so deep that it dilutes woke “poison” to “irrelevance”.

Mr. Ramaswamy said he is all in on the “America first” agenda.

“Believe me, I am an ‘America first’ conservative. I will not apologise for it. But to put America first, we now need to rediscover what America is. And that is why last week I announced my run for US president to deliver a national identity that we are missing in this country,” Mr. Ramaswamy said.

“This means that you believe in merit, that you get ahead in this country, not on the colour of your skin, but on the content of your character and your contributions. And that is why as the US president, I have pledged to get rid of affirmative action in this country once and for all. It is national cancer on our soul,” Mr. Ramaswamy said.

‘Ban U.S. companies from doing business in China’

Mr. Ramaswamy said he would ban U.S. companies from doing business in China.

“I think it is important to be honest. If we want to declare independence from China, that means we got to be willing to ban most U.S. businesses from doing business in China until the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) falls or until the CCP radically reforms itself. Because there is no easy way out other than taking that band-aid and ripping it right off,” Mr. Ramaswamy said.

“I am sorry Henry Kissinger. We are done with your experiment. In America, it is the only way out. We got to start thinking on the time scales of history, not the time scales of electoral cycles,” Mr. Ramaswamy said.

Kissinger served as U.S. Secretary of State and National Security Advisor under the presidential administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

“We do not need (Arthur Neville) Chamberlain, we need a little bit of (Winston) Churchill in this country. If you are willing to make a sacrifice, the chances are you will never have to make it because the other side will fall first,” Mr. Ramaswamy asserted.

Dismantling Department of Education

In his speech, Mr. Ramaswamy also called for dismantling the Department of Education and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

“I have already said last week, the first agency we will shut down and need to shut down in the United States is the U.S. Department of Education. It has no reason to exist. Never should have existed.

“And today, I am ready to announce the second government agency that I will shut down in this country we should have done this at least 60 years ago,” Mr. Ramaswamy said.

It has hurt Republicans and Democrats alike, he added.

“We are going to get it done as finally, it is time to shut down the FBI in America and create something new to take its place because we are done with the J. Edgar Hoover legacy to let this be a self-governing nation again,” Mr. Ramaswamy said, referring to the American law-enforcement administrator who served as the first Director of the FBI.

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