Senator Kennedy. The Man Who Helped Me Realize I Was a Conservative.

For all his faults, Senator Edward M. Kennedy was an effective politician. You have to give him that.  I must say, however, that for all my strong disagreements with the man, I do owe the man one thing…my Conservatism.

As a kid growing up in a Blue State, I bought the line that Chappaquidick was an unfortunate, personal tragedy.  I believed then, and still do, that people make mistakes and, if they truly seek forgiveness and are forgiving to others, should be forgiven for their trespasses.  We’re all human, humans make mistakes.  As I grew older, however, Mr. Kennedy’s behavior towards others who had made far less serious mistakes showed me that he was never serious in his contrition.

There are plenty of examples of how Mr. Kennedy held himself to one standard and everyone else another, far, far higher standard.  The Robert Bork Hearings was a turning point for me.  I grew up listening to Mr. Kennedy bemoan the fact that people kept bringing up Chappaquiddick.  And yet, during the Bork Hearings, Ted Kennedy, a man with a far darker past than his political opponent, couldn’t find it within him to forgive or overlook an anti-Semetic covenant in the deed to Judge Bork’s  house.  Judge Bork did not write the covenant nor did he agree with it.  It wasn’t legally enforceable in any state in the union.  But because he didn’t have this useless, unenforceable covenant in his deed removed,  Mr. Kennedy couldn’t forgive and forget.  After all those years of asking forgiveness for allowing a woman to drown in his mother’s car while he slept peacefully in his hotel room, now he couldn’t find it within him to forgive another human being for a politically manufactured transgression.  I was appalled by his rank hypocrisy.

It was at that moment that I began to realize, I am not a Liberal.  When I first registered to vote (at around this particular time), I registered as an Independent.  I had previously questioned Liberalism’s beliefs.  Liberalism routinely made fun of my religious beliefs and belittled the founders of this country.  But it wasn’t until I beheld the full breadth of Mr. Kennedy’s shocking hypocrisy that I realized that Liberalism held nothing for me but disdain, derision and an open hostility to much of my personal beliefs.

The other man responsible for my Conservatism is Ronald Reagan.  And I made this realization on the heels of Mr. Kennedy’s performance in the Bork Hearings.  When Judge Bork’s nomination failed, President Reagan held a press conference and expressed his disappointment that this had happened to such a qualified individual.  He then state that he felt it was his duty to find another nominee who was, and he leaned into the microphone for emphasis, “equally unacceptable.” I cheered.  The treatment Judge Bork had received was grotesquely unfair but the Democrats, led by Ted Kennedy, exulted in their new found tactic of “Borking.”  With that defiant, righteously indignant response to Mr. Kennedy’s hypocrisy, Ronald Reagan, convinced me that I was a Conservative.

So, Ted Kennedy is part of my Conservatism.  When I graduated from college, I went to work for the Romney for Senate campaign in 1994.  I had known Mitt and his family since I was 12-13 years old.  (I am LDS)  The campaign to unseat Senator Kennedy was a rough one; one that we ultimately lost.  Mr. Kennedy was in true form.  At one point, he even tried to get political mileage out of an incident where Mitt was briefly arrested for not having the proper permit for his boat; a fascinating argument from a man who has such a sorted past with issues concerning water.  He ordered his buddies in the local Carpenter’s union to beat up friends of mine on several occasions including my old Sunday School teacher.  She was shoved to the ground and hit over the head with her own sign by a drunken union thug outside Fanueil Hall.  So, I really grew to dislike the man and what he stood for.  But, at his passing I must admit that I do owe him, and President Reagan, for making who I am politically today.

Goodbye, Senator.