The 2024 Political Realignment — the ‘Make America Healthy Again’ Movement Joins MAGA

Former Democratic congresswoman and presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard helped President Trump prepare for Tuesday night’s debate. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. acted as a Trump surrogate in the spin room. Yet Trump made little mention of the issues — the “child health epidemic,” free speech and censorship, and anti-interventionism — that bind together this new MAHA-MAGA coalition that includes libertarians, anti-war activists, free speech warriors, and disillusioned Democrats.Will this be a short-lived GOP coalition behind Trump — a sort of “he’s the best we’ve got” — or is this a political realignment?“I definitely think it’s a realignment, 100 percent,” a strategist who worked on both Vivek Ramaswamy’s Republican presidential campaign and Nicole Shanahan’s independent run with Mr. Kennedy, Zach Henry, tells the Sun. “I would call it a commonsense caucus that has emerged, and it’s a lot of independent-minded critical thinkers from Vivek to Nicole to Bobby to Elon.”Dick Cheney’s endorsement of Vice President Harris last week was icing on the realignment cake, the first part of which occurred in 2016, when Trump brought the white working class solidly into the party and alienated some of the GOP free-market, neo-conservative establishment — whom Trump would call RINOs.“Rs get a Kennedy. Ds get a Cheney. And people think this election is politics as usual? They think the ‘sides’ are the ones they are familiar with?” novelist Walter Kirn, who used to be a darling of the literary left, posted to X.“I actually have the endorsement of 200 Republicans who have formally worked with President Bush, Mitt Romney, and John McCain including the endorsement of former Vice President Dick Cheney and Congressmember Liz Cheney,” Ms. Harris bragged at the debate Tuesday night, after deriding Trump as “extreme.”“I fired most of those people. Not so graciously,” Trump countered.Trump didn’t need to deflect this attack for the new heterodox coalition, though — an endorsement by Messrs. Cheney or Romney or McCain is kryptonite to them.Trump did address the threat of nuclear war at the debate, using his well-worn line that President Putin wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine if Trump was president. He didn’t, though, address the “deep state” or the country’s health epidemic or any endorsements by this coalition. When he was asked about healthcare, Trump fumbled on what he’d replace Obamacare with. “I have concepts of a plan,” he said.To those watching the liberty space, the alignment of Trump, Ms. Gabbard, Mr. Ramaswamy, Mr. Kennedy, and tech titans like Elon Musk should come as no surprise. Many of them speak at the same circuit of conferences and podcasts. This circuit often includes discussions of the “deep state,” bitcoin, and the harms of censorship, foreign intervention, and — sometimes on the more conspiratorial end — topics like vaccine harm, Jeffrey Epstein, and the like.While there is great disagreement among the coalition on various topics, the common foundation is support for free speech, medical freedom, and anti-interventionist foreign policy.A common refrain at these conferences is that the anti-war left has all-but disappeared and the Democrats have become the party of censorship and state control. “The moment that Obama got elected the anti-war movement on the left just disappeared,” the chairman of the Libertarian Party’s Classical Liberal Caucus, Jonathan Casey, told the Sun last year.When Mr. Kennedy suspended his campaign last month and endorsed Trump, he called Trump the best hope at getting a seat at the table in Washington. “We talked about Abraham Lincoln’s Team of Rivals,” Mr. Kennedy said of his “unity party” talks with Trump.“We are aligned with each other on the key issues, like ending the forever wars, ending childhood disease epidemics, securing the border, protecting free speech, unraveling corporate capture of our regulatory agencies,” Mr. Kennedy said. He launched his “Make America Healthy Again” movement later that day at a Trump rally. There are a slew of “wellness influencers” supporting Mr. Kennedy — and now Trump.“We’ve already seen one of the biggest realignments in American political history around 2016,” a former Trump appointee and Republican strategist, Matthew Bartlett, tells the Sun. “What is interesting is this boomerang notion, which is going so far left that you come around to the right — and you’re seeing Tulsi, you’re seeing RFK.”“Trump is certainly a rare bird in American politics and now he’s attracting some odd ducks,” Mr. Bartlett says. “The new right, if you will, is a rejection of the neo-con, rejection of free trade, it’s very online based, personality based, populist based. If Trump were to win, the new right will be the establishment in American politics.”For the first time, this group may have a voice in the White House, not just online. Trump promised to appoint a libertarian to his cabinet when he spoke at the Libertarian Party’s convention in May. Mr. Kennedy says Trump told him he made personnel errors in his first term that he would not repeat in a second. Mr. Kennedy is expected to get some role in a Trump administration, though Trump advisor Corey Lewandowsky tells the Sun it’s too premature to discuss specifics.“I remain in contact with the Trump campaign and have passed on some names for the cabinet position, but I can’t divulge any of those names yet,” the chairwoman of the Libertarian Party, Angela McArdle, tells the Sun.“My hope would be in a second administration that he would empower the right people,” Mr. Henry says.Mr. Henry doesn’t think the MAHA-MAGA liberty coalition will die if Trump loses in November. He says Trump is not necessarily the “sole leader,” but the “current figurehead” of the movement.Mr. Bartlett is more skeptical. “It’s unclear whether or not this is a lasting coalition within the Republican Party or if this is built purely on the personality of Trump,” he says. “If Trump were to lose, it’s unclear who picks up the torch.”

The 2024 Political Realignment — the ‘Make America Healthy Again’ Movement Joins MAGA

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