Politics certainly does make for some strange bedfellows.
However, when I came across a headline that stated that the independent candidacy of Robert Kennedy Jr. helped Joe Biden more than Donald Trump in a head-to-head matchup in November of 2024, I damn near slammed my head into a wall. Under no circumstances in a world that is operating somewhat normally does that make any sense.
But when I read this right here, I once again had to remind myself that nothing currently is making much sense. From said article...
Third-party candidate Robert F. Kennedy is on track to push President Joe Biden to an easy victory over Donald Trump in a potential 2024 showdown, according to a new poll.
Since Kennedy announced he was leaving the Democratic race to run as an independent earlier this month, the debate has swirled over whom he would hurt more, the four-times-indicted ex-president or the incumbent.
But an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist National Poll released Tuesday offered an early prediction: Biden would beat Trump by 7 percentage points when Kennedy is factored in.
If the election were held today, Biden would snag 44% of the vote to Trump’s 37%, followed by Kennedy’s 16% with 3% undecided, according to the survey.
Kennedy, whose anti-vaccine views appeal to some conservatives, is simply siphoning off more votes from Trump than Biden.
With the political scion on the ballot, Biden loses 5 percentage points among Democrats while Trump loses 10 points among Republicans, according to the poll.
There are just two obvious things that don't make any sense to me here:
- Is anyone voting for Joe Biden after seeing what he's done for the past three years?
- Robert Kennedy Jr pulled more votes from Donald Trump.
How in the hell is that even possible? What person who is a Trump supporter would jump ship to vote for Robert Kennedy Jr.? What episode of The Twilight Zone is this?
Well, my colleague Bonchie called this out months ago that RFK Jr. was going to be a problem for Trump and his warnings are coming back to haunt the Republicans now. RFK Jr.'s Independent Run Is Why Republicans Lose
From that article...
This is not good news for Republicans, and there's empirical evidence to back that up. According to the latest polling, RFK Jr. enjoys a very high approval rating among Republicans while he's extremely disliked by Democrats.
If this does happen (and it's a big if!) it could easily backfire on the GOP nominee. Kennedy is significantly more popular among Republican voters than among Democrats. QPac poll found him +30 among GOP, -43 among Dems. Siena had him +36 among Trump voters, -35 among Biden. https://t.co/yc3RoxaoKr pic.twitter.com/Xf3IXf6Qs4
— Jacob Rubashkin (@JacobRubashkin) September 29, 2023I'm not the only one worried about that dynamic either. Several of Donald Trump's biggest boosters are sounding the alarm as well.
I explain here why RFK running could hurt Trump.
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) September 29, 2023
Listen:https://t.co/gojPbhfW4xRFK cant win but he can deny Trump the White House and hand it to Dems https://t.co/GSC3Tu2EAV
— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) September 29, 2023None of this is happening in a vacuum. In fact, the two people I just quoted above were some of RFK Jr.'s biggest promoters, and they are hardly alone on the right. Many conservatives, specifically those skeptical of the COVID-19 vaccines, latched onto RFK Jr. very early in the cycle as some kind of anti-establishment figure. In fact, the only reason he has much of a platform today is because of right-wing media.
Bonchie finished with this flourish, with which I wholeheartedly agree:
The right has to stop going overboard promoting every leftist who just so happens to say something we agree with. Yes, RFK Jr. made some good points about COVID-19 vaccine mandates, but that didn't make him a conservative. All it made him was a far-left liberal who wasn't quite as annoying as most other far-left liberals.
This is just so spot-on.
I'm also going to add some other examples that may upset some people, but it's way past time that it's been said.
Republicans need to stop promoting any 12 or 13-year-old kids who write a letter and do a video as some sort of leader of the conservative movement. That doesn't mean that you just ignore the youngins; you just don't put them in the spotlight and act as though they have a ton of experience.
Tulsi Gabbard is a full-fledged "Bigger government is better" socialist who just happens to be anti-war. I'm anti-war also, but I'm not for the government becoming bigger and more powerful like she is. Yet she is making the rounds with GOP groups as if she is a conservative and she is not.
One of the biggest threats to our Republic — and, in my opinion, it has been for a while — is voters letting their feelings about how people say things or look dictate their support instead of the facts or their stances on the issues. Back in the 90s and 2000s, this was prominently a liberal or Democrat habit. However, since 2016, it has crept more and more into the Republican circle of things, and it is absolutely blurring the lines of common sense and destroying the Republicans' chances of winning across the board.
These latest polling numbers indicate that Kennedy is siphoning off support from Trump, and this needs to be stopped ASAP if Trump is going to walk away with the nomination for the 2024 general. As Bonchie mentioned above, there is NOTHING conservative about Kennedy, and even though he is despised by his own party right now, if he acts as a spoiler for Trump and helps POTUS 45 lose in the general, all would be forgiven in a heartbeat.
Conservative Republicans need to shed the warm fuzzy feelings of one issue of extreme love and snap out of it for 2024.
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