Vivek Ramaswamy, the 38-year-old biotech entrepreneur running third in Republican polling, emerged in the absence of Donald Trump as a surprise focus of the first debate of the Republican primary, showing scant respect for other candidates and drawing heavy fire in return.
“We live in a dark moment,” Ramaswamy declaimed, in the distinctly Trumpian and conspiratorial fashion that has become a hallmark of his campaign.
Ramaswamy’s bid for the Republican nomination has been hit by recent scandals over remarks that suggested sympathy for conspiracy theories around the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the January 6 assault on the Capitol. But he has sought to portray himself as a Trump-like outsider taking on the establishment with his extreme views.
All the other presidential candidates onstage in Milwaukee, Ramaswamy repeatedly said, were “bought and paid for” by donors.
After all eight candidates declined to raise their hands when asked if they believed human behavior was causing the climate crisis, Ramaswamy jumped in, stridently rapping out: “Unlock American energy, drill, frack, burn coal, embrace nuclear.”
It has been a month of wildfire disaster in Hawaii and heavy flooding in California. The Fox News hosts pointed out that the climate crisis was the number one concern for young American voters. Regardless, the youngest candidate on stage ploughed on: “The climate change agenda is a hoax … more people are dying of bad climate change policies than they are of actual climate.”
Amid exchanges on crime, Ramaswamy attacked the former vice-president Mike Pence, seeming even to doubt a Republican saint, Ronald Reagan, when he said: “Some others like you on this stage may have an, ‘It’s morning in America speech.’ It is not morning in America.
“We live in a dark moment and we have to confront the fact that we’re in an internal sort of cold cultural civil war and we have to recognise that.”
Ron DeSantis, second to Trump for months but widely seen to be struggling, stood centre stage. But the rightwing Florida governor was often reduced to an onlooker as Ramaswamy threw rhetorical punches and others hit him back, making him a frequent center of the debate.
Most sought to contrast Ramaswamy’s lack of governing experience with their work as governors or members of Congress. The attacks were frequently brutal and personal, though succeeded mostly in giving Ramaswamy more vital attention. He also capitalized on his “rookie” status by underscoring his relative youth and reminding viewers he was born in 1985.
In one of many angry exchanges, Pence said: “You recently said a president can’t do everything. Well, I got news for you, Vivek. I’ve been in the hallway. I’ve been in the West Wing. A president in the United States has to confront every crisis facing America.”
Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor who has based his campaign on attacking Trump, was characteristically blunt. Updating his famous 2016 attack on the Florida senator Marco Rubio, who he damned as robotic, he called Ramaswamy “a guy who sounds like ChatGPT”.
Referring to Ramaswamy’s opening statement, an attempt to sell Republicans on his image as an outsider, Christie said: “Last person in one of these debates who stood in the middle of the stage and said ‘What’s a skinny guy with an odd last name doing up here’ was Barack Obama, and I’m afraid we’re dealing with the same type of amateur crusade.”
Obama handed Republicans two crushing defeats and spent eight years in the White House. Christie also overlooked the famous moment at the business end of the 2012 election when he and Obama toured damage from Hurricane Sandy, an original sin in the eyes of the Republican right.
“And you’ll help elect me just like” you helped elect Obama, Ramaswamy shot back.
When he took over the Democratic primary of 2008, Obama was a US senator from Illinois, hymning hope and change. In a debate staged by the Republican party of Trump, Ramaswamy’s dash to the spotlight from the libertarian fringe seemed a bizarro opposite echo of Obama, in dark statement after dark statement from an evidently angry candidate.
Ramaswamy clashed with Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador, over his attitude to support for Ukraine in its war with Russia and relations with US allies.
He repeatedly clashed with Pence. He clashed again with Christie, over whether Trump should be pardoned if convicted on federal criminal charges. Echoing Trump and extreme advisers like Steve Bannon, Ramaswamy proposed to scrap the FBI and much of the federal government. Not long after his mockery of “morning in America rhetoric”, he said he would “deliver a Reagan 1980 revolution”.
He was not asked about his recent, conspiracy-tinged remarks about January 6 and 9/11.
In his closing statement, he rapped out hard-right talking points once again: “God is real. There are two genders. Fossil fuels are a requirement for human prosperity. Reverse racism is racism. An open border is not a border. Parents determine the education of their children. The nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to man. Capitalism lifts us up from poverty.”
Despite all the attacks of his rivals – or perhaps because of them – Ramaswamy was having the time of his life.
