The Republican Party of the United States opened the debate season with eight pre-candidates for the primaries last Wednesday (23), without the presence of the former president and favorite to be the candidate for the White House, Donald Trump.
The main bet of the night was the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, who faces obstacles in the electoral race, but remains in second place in the opinion polls.
What nobody expected, however, was that the spotlight would come from a third name, hitherto unknown and difficult to pronounce: Vivek Ramaswamy, a young 38-year-old businessman from Ohio.
Son of Indian immigrants, the pre-candidate never ran for public office and said during the first debate that he did not vote in the last five presidential elections, between 2004 and 2020.
In his speeches, the political novice presents himself as an “outsider” and “anti-woke” – he has already written three books on the subject, in which he criticizes the leftist wave of public policies involving ESG (acronym in English that stands for environmental sustainability, social and corporate governance) and gender and race ideologies.
As he stated in an article to The Wall Street Journal as soon as it announced its pre-candidacy in March of this year, the United States has been experiencing “an identity crisis” in recent administrations, which has caused a decline in patriotism among Americans.
“We’ve taken on secular religions like climateism, ‘Covidism’ and gender ideology to satisfy our search for meaning, but none of that answers questions about American identity,” he said.
With that, his main message when running for the Republican seat is to reformulate the Trumpist slogan of “making the USA the best country for Americans again”, building a solid identity around his government proposals.
A central point presented in his pre-candidacy is to defend the capitalist system, which, according to him, unites all political sides. To Forbes, Ramaswamy said that “both Democrats and Republicans feel most proud of the country when they are financially well”.
During the debate and on social networks, since the beginning of the pre-campaign, he spoke out against abortion, which he considers “murder”.
But, for Ramaswamy, the issue should not be legislated by the federal government, but at the state level, as it has been done since the US Supreme Court overturned the federal case law of Roe v. Wade last year.
He argues that each state should ban abortion within six weeks of pregnancy. “Homicide laws are dealt with at the state level, abortion is a form of murder, so it makes no sense for the federal Supreme Court to take responsibility for legislating on the matter,” he said in an interview with CNN.
Another issue raised during the debate was immigration, an ever-present agenda in republican discussions and on which the pre-candidate presented an even more rigid position than the others.
For Ramaswamy, a son of Indian immigrants who arrived in the country legally and “built their businesses from nothing”, as he said in an interview, the US must strengthen its borders, mainly with Mexico, and combat illegal immigration, carrying out the mass deportation of people who want to remain without documentation in the country.
His government project still has more “authorial” proposals, such as changing the minimum age for electoral participation.
The novice politician wants to raise the voting age to 25 years, with some conditions for younger people who want to participate in the elections.
Those over 18 will also be able to vote if they perform a “national service” such as six months in the armed forces or as an emergency responder, Ramaswamy proposes. Another possibility is to pass a test similar to citizenship.
The pre-candidate is also in favor of abolishing some state departments, such as Education, the FBI and Federal Revenue offices.
For Ramaswamy, there are many “redundant” bodies in the country and, if elected, he would reorganize these departments and their respective budgets.
On the war in Ukraine, unlike the position of the democratic president Joe Biden, who has supported the European country in the fight against Russian troops by sending humanitarian, financial and military aid, Ramaswamy defends the concession of territories for the end of the war and a armistice.
“I understand that we need to end the war on peaceful terms, with some concessions to Russia, in an armistice agreement similar to that of the Koreas,” he told ABC News.
The young man who gained prominence in this first political clash of the republican party also promised an “anti-China” government, ending trade negotiations with the communist country, which he considers “the main enemy of the USA”
His campaign funding comes out of his own pocket. The young politician graduated in biology at Harvard and law at Yale. He owns two companies: one in the field of biotechnology and the other in financial asset management.
According to a list by Forbes, the business placed him among the 20 richest young people in the country, with a net worth of US$ 1 billion. Among Republican candidates, he ranks second in wealth after Trump, with a fortune estimated at $2.5 billion.
The next debate of the Republican candidates is scheduled to take place in California next month.
Former President Donald Trump said he will not participate in discussions with the other pre-candidates due to his advantage in the election polls. In addition, the politician faces several criminal charges across the country.
Last Thursday (24th), he appeared at the Fulton County Jail, in Atlanta, where he was booked and released after paying bail for the accusation of involvement in the alleged attempt to reverse the results of the last presidential elections in Georgia, in which he was defeated by Biden.
Ramaswamy was the debate participant who most defended the former president. In one of his speeches, he considered Trump “the best president of the 21st century”.
If he wins the presidential elections, he promised to pardon the Republican politician for the four criminal charges he has been indicted for in recent months.
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