On the Politics and Fate of RFK

The American Spectator ^ | June 5, 2018 | Paul Kengor

[GreyFriar]

Fifty years after his death, his deep conservative beliefs continue to define him.

It was 50 years ago, June 5, 1968, that Robert F. Kennedy was shot by a 24-year-old Palestinian-Jordanian immigrant looking to exact revenge upon the New York senator for his support of Israel a year earlier in the Six Day War.

“My determination to eliminate R.F.K. is becoming more and more of an unshakable obsession,” Sirhan Sirhan had raged in his diary on May 18, 1968. “R.F.K. must die. R.F.K. must be killed. R.F.K. must be assassinated.”

...on a historic night when he had just won the Democratic Party primary in California. Democrats would need to find another nominee. Bobby Kennedy was out. And for liberals, they lost a hero, an icon. They lost — they believed — a political soulmate.

Or had they?

Liberal or Anti-Liberal?

Truth be told, it’s hard to look back at RFK as a liberal — certainly by today’s standards of liberalism, but even by the standards of the ’60s. To be sure, it would also be hard to flatly call him a conservative, or to fully dismiss liberalism in his life or certainly in his 1968 presidential run.

(snip)

The reality is that RFK, like his late brother, like their father, were old-school Democrats, before the Democratic Party — and before today’s Kennedy clan, ultimately embodied by the almost cartoonish-buffoonish Ted Kennedy — all went hard left.

For starters, RFK, like JFK, like the family patriarch, Joseph P. Kennedy, was an ardent anti-communist, which immediately put him at odds with leftists in the party. RFK was a Cold Warrior with a passion for covert operations, including against Cuba, where he detested Fidel Castro.

[minnesota_bound]

Sirhan Sirhan should be released as he has done his time... just like the guy who shot Reagan and the democrats released him : )

I know it will never happen. The dems will release 10’s of thousands of other criminals to vote for them but not Sirhan Sirhan as they have to keep Camelot and the martyr story going about RFK.

[DesertRhino]

MK Ultra. The CIA did not want RFK to become president and to begin to dig deeply into the murder of his brother.

[Buckeye McFrog]

I thought this thread would be about what to do with an empty stadium.

[Intolerant in NJ]

For starters, RFK, like JFK, like the family patriarch, Joseph P. Kennedy, was an ardent anti-communist, which immediately put him at odds with leftists in the party...forget anti-communist - according to Howie Carr's "Kennedy Babylon", RFK was a lifelong homophobe - that alone would have had him banished to rightwing land.....