RFK survives assault from Big Pharma-loving Democrats

My friend Dan Foster voiced a theory about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. today that strikes me as particularly accurate. In response to a comment from the New York Times’s Ross Douthat giving credence to RFK’s belief that Lyme disease could be the result of a materially engineered bioweapon, he noted: “The reason I think Kennedy gets confirmed is because every single American agrees with him on one of his fringe things. He’s like the Captain Planet of kook.” This is the ultimate expression of voter antipathy toward traditional politicians, laid atop suspicions that everyone holds about something on the edge of appropriate discussion. It goes like this: “Well, yeah RFK’s probably wrong about X, and definitely about Y, but Z? He’s the only guy who tells the truth about Z!”

Democrats, seemingly unaware of this underlying effect, played almost entirely into the controversial nominee’s hands today. They diminished his expressed concerns about the Big Pharma-Big Government unity project and its works and created a series of moments that played to his benefit. Democrat senator Elizabeth Warren demanding he commit to not suing pharma companies or taking pharma money? RFK dismissed the idea that they would ever want to give him any. Catherine Cortez Masto getting into payment schemes teed up a clip-worthy rant against chronic disease. And Bernie Sanders demanding to know whether RFK stood by onesies sold by his non-profit prompted an outburst of laughter from Megyn Kelly in the second row.

There are numerous justifiable reasons to go after RFK as HHS secretary, but this isn’t it. The much bigger issue is that HHS is a job that traditionally is much more about the reform of the most massive systems in the federal government, and Kennedy showed little knowledge about how they work and gave away less about his (or the Trump teams’) plans for reform of Medicaid and Medicare. The prospect of RFK and Dr. Mehmet Oz at HHS and CMS respectively is not a scene that suggests a fully versed, policy heavy approach to reform of entities that have resisted it for decades.

But as committee hearing performances go, RFK came off as authentic and mounted capable defenses against the numerous accusations based off of podcast interviews and public statements going back decades. His supporters were out in force, repeatedly laughing and commenting from behind him to the frustration of the chairman. No Republican who already supported Kennedy would look at this hearing today and find a reason to change their mind — and for him, that will almost certainly be enough to get him over the threshold on the Senate floor. What comes next, no one can say — but we can be sure he’s definitely going to focus on Z, whatever Z is for you.