Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Photo courtesy of Team Kennedy.
Because of the nationwide reach of the Libertarian Party, it is often a magnet for candidates with name recognition who desire an easy path to getting on the ballot in all 50 states. The campaign of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is apparently considering such a course, but at National Review, Jim Gerhaghty warns that Kennedy’s positions would make him the ” least libertarian Libertarian presidential nominee of all time.” He writes:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. When pollsters offer RFK Jr. as an option in their national presidential polling, the independent candidate does fairly well in a three-way race: 21 percent in the Harvard-Harris survey, 18 percent in Reuters-Ipsos, 22 percent in Quinnipiac, 16 percent in Rasmussen. That’s not likely to be enough to win any state, but if Kennedy finished in that range, he would be the strongest third-party candidate since H. Ross Perot in 1992. (It would also likely mean that whoever wins the presidency this year will win with the smallest plurality since Bill Clinton’s 43 percent that year.)
But to achieve those numbers, RFK Jr. needs to get on the ballot in as many states as possible, ideally all 50.
Note that Kennedy is exploring the option of running as the Libertarian nominee, which I would contend would make him the least libertarian Libertarian presidential nominee of all time:
RFK Jr.’s worldview is a shambolic collection of tasteless Holocaust metaphors, sinister conspiracies contending that vaccines and 5G high-speed-transmission towers are tools for subjugating the population, and authoritarian impulses. He now says that he opposes gun control, but, in 2018, he stated, “Parkland students are right; the NRA is a terror group.” He wanted to ban ExxonMobil from operating in New York State because he contended that it misled the public about climate change. He has called for the Koch brothers to be tried at The Hague as war criminals, and DeSantis’s memory is correct: Kennedy said he wished there was a law that would allow him to punish climate-change skepticism. He argued that state attorneys general should revoke the charters of the American Enterprise Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute because they were “oil-industry surrogates.” He now wishes for voters to see him as a defender of the First Amendment.
We should also note the potential independent candidacy of some candidate to be named later from No Labels. This effort is getting a little stranger as we proceed into 2024, because No Labels has stated that they intend to nominate a ticket of one Republican and one Democrat, but they don’t know which figures yet. They also don’t know how they’re going to select those candidates. They also don’t know when they’re going to select those candidates, other than to say they will evaluate the political landscape after Super Tuesday. No Labels is like the J. J. Abrams “Mystery Box” of political entities.
Read more here.
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