Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is shaping up to be quite the puzzle for his rivals in the race for the White House.
Former President Donald Trump calls him a “Democrat plant.” He says Mr. Kennedy’s platform resembles what liberal Democrats would embrace.
Democratic officials, though, say Mr. Kennedy is a MAGA-style disruptor whose campaign threatens to siphon desperately needed support away from President Biden’s dicey reelection coalition.
The reality is complex. Mr. Kennedy, running as an independent, embraces most of the Democrats’ ideological goals of abortion rights and combating climate change but sounds skeptical of bipartisan Washington’s consensus on open borders and large amounts of aid for Ukraine’s war with Russia.
“He considers himself a Kennedy Democrat, which is different than the Democratic Party we have today,” Dick Russell, author of “The Real RFK Jr.,” said shortly after Mr. Kennedy entered the presidential race. “His belief is that we are in a place where a merger of corporate and state power has occurred to such a degree that it threatens the very existence of the free market capitalism society we have had and of our democracy itself.”
An independent or third-party candidate has not made a dent in a presidential election for decades, but Mr. Kennedy is drawing enough support that both parties are worried about his chances as a spoiler — particularly in an election where voters who dislike both major party choices are seeking a soft landing spot.
Pollsters say Mr. Kennedy, a son of former U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, draws from all demographics, though the voters he attracts usually fall somewhere between the two parties on the issues.
So does Mr. Kennedy.
Economy
Mr. Kennedy sounds more like a Democrat than a Republican on taxes. He says Mr. Trump’s 2017 tax cuts were skewed toward big corporations instead of the “little guy.”
On his campaign website, he says corporations are sitting on $8 trillion in potential tax revenue, although their federal tax contributions have plummeted from 33% in the 1950s to 10% today.
“It’s high time they paid their fair share,” his campaign said.
As part of Mr. Kennedy’s broader critique of the Biden economy, he says inflation is crippling low-income and younger Americans seeking opportunities such as homeownership.
Abortion
Mr. Kennedy harks back to older Democratic Party rhetoric on abortion. He rejects the urgent abortion rights attitude of the modern party and says, “Every abortion is a tragedy,” but the government should stay out of regulating it.
“I don’t want government or bureaucrats telling women when to terminate a pregnancy — or when not to,” he told MSNBC.
Mr. Kennedy says he prioritizes maximizing life and minimizing abortions and is focused on making sure women do not feel the need to terminate a pregnancy out of fear that they cannot financially support a child.
Health care
Mr. Kennedy has stated his opposition to vaccinations but insists he is not anti-vaccine, a stance that leaves many observers confused.
His campaign platform decries a high rate of “chronic disease” in the U.S. and says Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden “have allowed America’s health to deteriorate.”
Mr. Kennedy pledges to convene a meeting at the National Institutes of Health during his first week in office to refocus the federal government’s $50 billion medical research budget toward chronic disease prevention.
“Kennedy will start funding studies into the causes of chronic disease, including toxic chemicals (PFAS, glyphosate, neonics, etc.), air and water pollution, microplastics, electromagnetic pollution, ultra-processed foods, and pharmaceutical products,” his campaign website states.
Guns
The 70-year-old independent has said he is “not going to take anybody’s guns away” and doubts that further gun restrictions would curtail mass shootings.
“It can’t just be because of the guns; it has to be something else,” Mr. Kennedy said.
He said he wants more studies on the causes of gun violence, including the roles of video games, social media and psychiatric drugs.
“When I was a kid, we had gun clubs in our schools. … Kids brought .22 rifles to school,” Mr. Kennedy said. “They were not walking into classrooms and shooting people.”
Climate
Mr. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer, complains of the nation’s “longtime deadly addiction to coal and oil.”
He has voiced support for the Green New Deal but said he is more interested in a market-based approach to protecting the environment that includes imposing a tax on carbon emissions and eliminating taxpayer subsidies for the coal and oil industries.
“Right now, we have a market that is governed by rules that were written by the carbon incumbents to reward the dirtiest, filthiest, more poisonous, most toxic, most warmongering fuels from hell, rather than the cheap, clean, green, wholesome and patriotic fuels from heaven,” Mr. Kennedy has said.
Mr. Kennedy said he would phase out fracking of natural gas by cutting taxpayer-funded subsidies for the industry and putting “a moratorium on new exploration.”
He has also called for banning natural gas exports. He said the U.S. should be “keeping that gas in our country and using it to rebuild our industrial base.”
“It does no good for the American people to ship it abroad to Europe,” he said.
Immigration
Mr. Kennedy labels the border a “humanitarian crisis.” He said Mr. Biden opened the border and allowed the asylum system to spiral out of control.
“Today there is no control, no effective policy and, as a result, there is a humanitarian, security, and economic disaster,” his campaign website says. “Just as a cell has a membrane, a country must have borders or it will disintegrate.”
His answers include building more of Mr. Trump’s border wall system, which he faults Mr. Biden for halting, and speeding up immigration hearings so the asylum system works.
He said less than 15% of asylum claims are successful, so quick returns of relatives and neighbors would deter other would-be migrants.
Military
On the Ukraine issue, Mr. Kennedy proposes a deal to “offer to withdraw our troops and nuclear-capable missiles from Russia’s borders” in exchange for a Russian withdrawal of all its troops and a guarantee of Ukrainian “freedom and independence” with a U.N. peacekeeping force to monitor Ukraine’s east.
“That will be the start of a broader program of demilitarization of all countries,” he says on his website.
He envisions a peace dividend at home. He said the U.S. did not slash defense spending like it should have after the Cold War.
“We need to cut that back to the levels we were promised,” Mr. Kennedy said in an interview with Breaking Points.
He said he would act in the image of his uncle, former President John F. Kennedy, whom the campaign described as “a firm anti-imperialist.”
Jan. 6 pardons
Mr. Kennedy has not ruled out pardoning the Jan. 6 protesters charged with storming the U.S. Capitol to try to upend Mr. Biden’s 2020 election victory.
Although he blames Mr. Trump for encouraging the riot with “his delusion that the election was stolen,” Mr. Kennedy shares some of the former president’s concerns about the weaponization of the federal government against the protesters.
“As president, I will appoint a special counsel — an individual respected by all sides — to investigate whether prosecutorial discretion was abused for political ends in this case, and I will right any wrongs that we discover,” Mr. Kennedy said in a statement.
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.