Thursday evening at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, Texas, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. repeatedly brought the GOP midterm convention audience to their feet with a speech reminiscent of Jeane Kirkpatrick’s speech at the 1984 Republican National Convention. Like Kirkpatrick, RFK Jr. noted his Democratic Party roots. Like Kirkpatrick, RFK Jr. emphasized the differences between the modern Democratic Party and the Democratic Party of a bygone era. RFK Jr. was a Democrat chosen by Republican President Donald Trump to “make America healthy again,” while in 1981, Kirkpatrick was a Democrat chosen by Republican President Ronald Reagan to help him win the Cold War.
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RFK Jr. stated that neither his father (Robert F. Kennedy) nor his uncle (John F. Kennedy) would recognize today’s Democrats. Jeane Kirkpatrick in 1984 noted that neither Harry Truman, JFK, nor Lyndon Johnson would recognize the Democrats who gathered that year in San Francisco, whom she labeled the “blame America first crowd.”
Kirkpatrick in 1984 called the Carter administration’s foreign policy “inadequate, uninformed and mistaken.” And she said the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 “marked an end to the dismal period of retreat and decline.” Reagan, she said, restored confidence and reaffirmed “American ideals.” She listed the many foreign policy accomplishments of Reagan’s first term, including restoring the U.S. economy, rebuilding our military strength, liberating Grenada from communist rule, and protecting El Salvador against communist insurgents. The Democrats’ response to Reagan’s achievements, Kirkpatrick repeatedly emphasized, was to “blame America first.”
RFK Jr. told the GOP midterm convention that his uncle, President Kennedy, and his father, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, pursued foreign and domestic policies similar to the policies of President Trump. He ridiculed the health care policies of President Biden, especially during the COVID pandemic, and he accused the Democrats of “obliterating” the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights by closing places of worship, censoring medical professionals and conservatives who disagreed with Democrats’ COVID policies, and using lawfare to attempt to prevent Donald Trump from recapturing the presidency.
Meanwhile, the Democratic political leaders, Kennedy said, canceled their own convention in 2024 after President Biden’s dismal debate performance and crowned Kamala Harris as their hand-picked candidate: “The party of ‘no kings’ simply anointed a queen.”
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Kirkpatrick in 1984 praised the leadership, capabilities, and values of Ronald Reagan, who the Democrats had attempted to portray as a warmonger or, in Clark Clifford’s words, an “amiable dunce.” RFK Jr. in his midterm convention speech praised Donald Trump for his integrity, courage, intelligence, empathy, compassion, trustworthiness, and his “encyclopedic grasp of the issues.” Everything the Democrats and the mainstream media say about Trump, RFK Jr. said, was and is a lie.
In 1984, Kirkpatrick closed her speech by proclaiming that “the American people, proud of our country, proud of our freedom, proud of ourselves, will reject the San Francisco Democrats and send Ronald Reagan back to the White House.”
RFK Jr. ended his speech by invoking the legacy of Charlie Kirk, who, he said, brought himself and Donald Trump together. Some Democrats, Kennedy said, warned him that he shouldn’t trust Trump. They were wrong, Kennedy said, because “President Trump has kept every single promise that he made to me, without exception.”
Just as Ronald Reagan was in 1984, according to Kirkpatrick, making America safer and more secure, so Donald Trump today is, according to RFK Jr., making America healthy again and needs a Republican-controlled Congress to complete this important work.
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