Vivek Ramaswamy Seeks Trump Supporters While Nikki Haley Courts Moderates
August 25, 2023
Vivek Ramaswamy appears to have pursued two goals during this week’s debate among Republican candidates for United States President: take extreme positions and attack the other candidates to get media attention and, for his future political contests, win over supporters of former President Donald Trump.
Ramaswamy succeeded in his first objective of getting extensive media coverage. “Vivek Ramaswamy Grabs Spotlight at First Republican Primary Debate,” was the headline of a story in The Wall Street Journal. Political novice Vivek Ramaswamy’s contrarian aggression won him outsize attention in the first Republican presidential debate, was the headline of a CNBC story.
Ramaswamy’s comments, especially against the other candidates, was widely replayed by several TV channels, some of which also interviewed him.
Born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, Ramaswamy’s parents are immigrants from India. He was a nationally ranked junior tennis player and finished at the top of his class at St. Xavier High School. He earned a degree in Biology from Harvard University, 2007. While at Harvard, he founded StudentBusinesses.com, a startup which connected entrepreneurs with professional resources via the internet, He ran the business till it was sold in 2009.
Ramaswamy earned a J.D. from Yale Law School, 2013, receiving financial support from a Soros Fellowship for New Americans (2011) as “the child of immigrants from India.” While at Yale he also worked at a hedge fund. He then started a biotech company, Roivant Sciences, where he oversaw the development of five drugs that were subsequently approved by the Food and Drugs Administration.
In 2022, Ramaswamy founded Strive, an asset management firm. He is married to Apoorva, a throat surgeon and Assistant Professor at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. They live in Columbus, Ohio where they are raising their two sons.
During the debate, Ramaswamy continued to do what he has done so far during the campaign. Like Donald Trump, he plucked “popular, often misleading rhetoric from the fringe of right-wing media and internet chatter and present(ed) it back to an audience that loves it,” according to a report in The Washington Post. Ramaswamy said that climate change was a hoax; that he would stop funding for Ukraine’s defense; and that he would pardon Donald Trump on his first day in office.
While Ramaswamy’s aggressive talk and tactics got wide media attention, Nikki Haley’s calm, moderate stance got her approval from the constituency that may matter most in the 2024 Presidential election: independent voters in swing states like Wisconsin. A poll of independent voters in Wisconsin, where the debate was held, found that Haley was the debate’s “winner” by a 19 percent margin, according to Slate.
Haley “looked comfortable onstage and made a series of fluid, coherent, and strategically savvy statements,” Slate reported. She said that contraception should be available to every woman; banning abortion before 15 weeks nationally was not possible given opposition from the Democrats; and climate change is real but that the U.S. needs to make China and India lower their emissions
Haley is a former Governor of South Carolina (2011-2017) and a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, under President Trump (2017-2018).
Nikki Haley, Wikimedia
Born in Bamberg, South Carolina, Nimrata (Nikki) Randhawa was the daughter of Indian immigrants. Her first job was keeping the books for her family’s clothing store, starting at age 13. She earned a B.S. in Accounting from Clemson University (1994). Her husband Michael Haley served as a Captain in the Army National Guard and was a combat veteran deployed to Afghanistan. They have two children, Rena and Nalin.
During this week’s Republican candidates’ debate Haley said that then Vice President Mike Pence was right not to help Trump overturn the 2020 election. She added that Trump is “the most disliked politician in America. We can’t win a general election that way.”
Following the Republican debate, Ramaswamy narrowly topped Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as the best-performing candidate, according to a New York Post poll. But Ramaswamy did not gain support of Republicans backing former President Donald Trump, who did not take part in the debate. Trump leads the race of Republican Presidential candidates by some 40 points.
During the debate, Ramaswamy said “President Trump, I believe, was the best president of the 21st century.” Trump posted Ramaswamy’s comment on the Truth Social media platform. “This answer gave Vivek Ramaswamy a big WIN in the debate because of a thing called TRUTH. Thank you Vivek!” Trump added. “Vivek Ramaswamy Kissed Up to Trump, and Trump Liked It,” was the headline of a story in Vanity Fair.
Apparently, Ramaswamy “Kissed up to Trump” hoping that in his future political contests, when Trump is no longer a candidate,.Trump’s supporters will recall his backing the former president and vote for him. Trump is 77-years-old and so 2024 will likely be his last Presidential contest.
Ramaswamy, who is 38, is in his first political campaign. He appears to be eager to gain support among Trump’s supporters, who make up a majority of voters in Republican primary elections and presently vote as a block. Ramaswamy, noted The Daily Beast, has been transparent in his grift to win over Donald Trump supporters.
It remains to be seen whether or not Ramaswamy gains wide support among Trump’s supporters, given his past statements about Trump. A day after the debate, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and one of the Republican candidates, pointed out the apparent hypocisy of Ramaswamy on Fox News. In his book, Ramaswamy said that Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the election results on January, 6, 2020 was “reprehensible, plain and simple.”
Christie also pointed out that Ramaswamy’s statement, during the debate, that he’s a “skinny guy with a funny last name” was copied from former President Barack Obama. During the keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Obama referred to himself as a “skinny kid with a funny name.”
Apparently, Trump would prefer to contest against Ramaswamy for the Republican nomination than DeSantis, whom many Republicans and major Republican political donors consider the best candidate to defeat current President and Democrat Joe Biden in the 2024 Presidential election. A Washington Post poll, following this week’s debate, found that 29% of Republican voters said that DeSantis won the debate, compared to 26% who backed Ramaswamy - and 16% for Haley.
“If Vivek thinks that Donald Trump is the greatest president of the 21st century, what the hell is he doing running?” former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said. “He should drop out tomorrow.”
Vivek Ramaswamy. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
