Camelot has come to Mar-a-Lago. It glitters faintly in misty eyes, the mythical zenith of Democrat aspirations. The promise of kingdom come. It lives on in the minds of angst ridden egalitarian liberals—memories of a tangible utopia and the glory days of JFK. Attendant was the timeless beauty of Jackie O, with the gallant RFK poised to vanquish the illiberal rabble who threatened the sacredness of equity. Or, at least that’s how the grizzled, old Democrat party leadership likes to think of that time.
Camelot was the promise of an enlightened America with a young, vibrant Democrat leader, gleaming in his Arthurian plate, astride a noble war horse, shod with the gospel of good intentions. RFK Jr. is the inheritor of this great liberal fantasy, and bears JFK’s golden scepter of destiny. Gasps could be heard from Martha’s Vineyard as far as Rehoboth Beach, Delaware when RFK Jr. besmirched his royal ermine by draping it over the shoulders of the Orange Man.
RFK Jr.’s wife, Cheryl Hines, is Hollywood royalty—best known for her role as Larry David’s wife Cheryl on Curb Your Enthusiasm. A vetted and careful liberal, she has adorned her husband throughout his fitful quest to head a party so radical, so rabidly collectivist and totalitarian, that the sainted JFK, if he were to alight from his sanctified, mortuary pedestal, would find no succor amongst the denizens of current Democrat party leadership. In that morass of Stalinist party politics, RFK Jr. has faced nothing but open hostility, even to the point of a malignant disinterest in his personal security.
For a committed liberal like Hines, who has tasted of the luxuries afforded to the most adept practitioners of virtue signaling, Cheryl has found it existentially difficult to come to terms with her husband’s decision to embrace the Orange Man. Certainly her invitations to all the most noteworthy and exclusive cocktail parties hang in the balance, and her carefully cultivated reputation is in jeopardy of tittering reproach. All her decades of sensitivity won’t save her from the taint of the uncouth Orange Man.
Reportedly, RFK Jr.’s decision has placed a strain on the marriage, a dissonance which creates a “very uncomfortable” circumstance for Cheryl, a devotee of the party of wild inflation, crisis at the southern border, race baiting, and the conflagration of the Middle East. All of that is inconsequential so long as compassion is expressed for the homeless, and the appropriate gestures of grief and distress are pantomimed.
But, RFK Jr. seems to be built of sterner stuff. He’s weathering familial bluster from those he describes as “at the center of the Democratic [Sic] Party.” A dynasty built on the illicit trade of alcohol during Prohibition. A family who wholeheartedly supports Joe Biden, knowing full well of his decline into raving senility. Though Biden displays a bust of Robert F. Kennedy behind the Resolute Desk, RFK’s brand of politics is closer to MAGA than the racialized statism of Harris, Obama, and the fading Pelosi.
That recognition is what sets RFK Jr. apart from his simpering family. The Kennedy brand has been drying on the vine like a desiccated prune. As the Democrat party marches, goose stepping, further to the left, the remaining members and offspring of Camelot scurry behind, prodded by the ghosts of Chappaquiddick.
So, RFK Jr. is doing what no one else in his party or family is willing to do — recognize and affirm that Trump’s MAGA has more in common with JFK than does Harris.
MAGA or Make America Great Again originated during Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign. Reagan won against the disastrous presidency of Jimmy Carter, a Democrat who plunged American into one of the worst economic crises since the Great Depression. The similarities today are eerie, with parallels in energy and foreign policy crises engendered by the woke and incompetent Harris-Biden administration.
RFK Jr.’s X post on “What ‘MAGA’ really means” demonstrates an understanding of the deep commonalities which existed between the parties of the JFK era. In large part, Republicans and Democrats were angling for the same thing—they just differed with regard to the means. And, even in differing, they saw the necessity of comity. That’s what Ronald Reagan tapped into to deliver a landslide victory in 1980. RFK Jr. writes, “‘Make America Great Again’ recalls a nation brimming with vitality, with a can-do spirit, with hope and a belief in itself…It was a nation of broad prosperity, the world’s most vibrant middle class, and an idealistic belief (though not consistently applied) in freedom, justice, and democracy.”
As RFK Jr. knows, MAGA embodies the highest ideals JFK espoused, impelling him to challenge the nation to literally reach for the moon. In response to the threat from the Soviet Union, and its accomplishment in placing Sputnik in orbit, JFK mobilized the vitality of the American economy and inspired the “can-do spirit.” Harris and her party have bound the vibrancy of the middle class with the heavy chains of insuperable inflation, and grind freedom, justice, and democracy under the iron wheel of statist control.
JFK, if he were alive today, would be a MAGA guy. Because MAGA undergirds the notion of “ask not what your country can do for you—ask what can you do for your country.” It presupposes a capable, engaged, and muscular citizenry which is capable of upholding the requirements of civic duty necessary to the preservation of liberty.
Harris and her ilk would have us all in servitude to a ubiquitous state — serfs instead of citizens. RFK Jr. will have none of it, and who would know better than a man steeped in Democrat party politics? The ship of state is foundering and RFK Jr. is pointing to MAGA as a means of deliverance.