Ramaswamy doesn’t do shame, but he’s embarrassing his party
Washington Examiner
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After the fourth Republican presidential debate, it is clear that the Republican Party will never be led by Vivek Ramaswamy. His candidacy, which might once have seemed a welcome gust of fresh air, has dwindled into a third-rate imitation of former President Donald Trump’s greatest conspiratorial hits.
It is far past time for Ramaswamy to stop embarrassing everyone, including himself, and end his presidential campaign.
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The first Republican debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, feels so much longer ago than just three months. Former Gov. Nikki Haley was the star, but Ramaswamy arguably also shone that night, earning the most search interest on Google and a boost in the polls. He could have built on that momentum, turning his energy into a substantive critique of Trump and other contenders for the nomination.
Instead, he has turned almost exclusively to schoolyard taunts and crazy uncle musings. He’s now just an annoying manchild, desperate for attention. According to Ipsos polling of Republican primary voters, Ramaswamy was rated as the worst performer on the recent debate night, by far. That rating was well deserved.
When he wasn’t baselessly calling Haley a corrupt Nazi, Ramaswamy ran through items on a laundry list of online paranoia. Asked to differentiate himself from the other candidates onstage, he said he was the only one brave enough to claim that both Jan. 6 and 9/11 were inside jobs, that Jews control our immigration system, and that the 2020 election was stolen. The only crazy thing he forgot was his tinfoil hat.
In that first debate, Ramaswamy was the only candidate to speak about how the federal government’s intrusive welfare state breaks up families by paying women who use a means-tested government program (including subsidies for private insurance on healthcare exchanges) not to be married. The Biden administration’s war on faith and family could have been a centerpiece of Ramaswamy’s campaign, and a topic for the party to build on. Instead, we are now treated by him to gotcha geography quizzes on the names of Ukraine’s eastern provinces. It was intended to stump Haley but failed to do so.
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The Trump era has been a difficult time for many Republican politicians to manage. Just ask former Speakers Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). The leadership of the Republican Party was in desperate need of a shake-up. It had grown cozy with Wall Street and placed too much value on gross national product and too little on topics more relevant to voters’ well-being, such as immigration and the family.
Some Republicans are fighting for what matters to rank-and-file Republican voters and coming up with innovative solutions. Ramaswamy is not. Instead, he has chosen to be a facsimile of Trump, the game show host-turned-president. It is a pitiful sight. Ramaswamy should get out. He will not be missed.