Vivek Ramaswamy is the kind of anti-LGBTQ used-car salesman the GOP loves

Following his performance in last week’s Republican presidential debate, Vivek Ramaswamy has emerged as this latest bright shiny object fascinating the mainstream media and GOP voters alike. Ramaswamy, a biotech executive who compensates for his lack of elected experience with overabundant confidence in himself, stood out in the debate with his crisp language and sharp elbows.

He also stood out because he knows exactly what to say to pander to the GOP audience. No wonder he is rising in the polls.

Related:

Conservative Christian slams Vivek Ramaswamy for not being Christian as he rises in GOP polls

Ramaswamy said that he has adopted “Judeo-Christian values,” but the activist said “God hates” him because he’s Hindu.

Politicians like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis keep asking themselves, how can they outflank Donald Trump on the issues? But Ramaswamy actually asks the better question: how can he be a better used car salesman than the ex-president?

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Ramaswamy has all the characteristics of Trump’s ability to read an audience without Trump’s grifting impulses. Like Trump, his political opinions are subject to change as they suit his current needs. He doesn’t seem to care what he said in the past. He just cares about what he needs to say to close the deal.

One of Ramaswamy’s big applause lines in the debate was to proclaim, “The climate change agenda is a hoax.” But in a CBS interview in March, Ramaswamy said, “Climate change is also real, by the way.”

Just like Trump, Ramaswamy can be slippery, raising issues that he knows resonate with his audience without actually embracing the worst elements of them. For example, Ramaswamy told a gathering of Iowa Republicans, “We can handle the truth about what really happened on January 6.” When a reporter subsequently asked him what the “truth” was, Ramaswamy said, “I don’t know, but we can handle it.”

His vague language gives comfort to the conspiracy theorists who are at home in today’s GOP. It conjures up the specter that the insurrection was a false flag operation, concocted to make Trump supporters look bad.

Ramaswamy is also good at making the kind of sweeping promises that he can’t possibly deliver. If elected, he says he will eliminate not just the Department of Education but also the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service. He would have the military attack drug operations in Mexico without regard to the disastrous diplomatic consequences. He also wants to fire three-quarters of the federal workforce.

As a sign of just how willing Ramaswamy is to say anything, no matter how nonsensical, if he thinks it will sell his campaign, he said on Meet the Press yesterday that Mike Pence blew “a historic opportunity” on January 6. The opportunity wasn’t to declare Trump president but instead to certify the 2020 election results and then pass laws that would create a single day for voting, mandate government IDs to vote, and return to paper ballots.

“What I would have said is: This is a moment for a true national consensus where there’s two elements of what’s required for a functioning democracy in America,” Ramaswamy declared. “One is secure elections, and the second is a peaceful transfer of power. When those things come into conflict, that’s an opportunity for heroism.”

This is baloney, pure and simple. But it is a Trump-like “I alone can fix it” solution.

Of course, the main thing that Ramaswamy shares with Trump is the vision that we live in a dystopian world, where the “faith, patriotism, hard work, family” are being sacrificed on the altar of Woke Inc., (the title of Ramaswamy’s book).

Chief among these is what Ramaswamy describes as the “cult” of the LGBTQ+ movement. “In the name of rights, what they’ve actually done is created a new culture of oppression in the opposite direction, imposing that on kids,” he said in the same Meet the Press interview.

Ramaswamy has been particularly vicious about trans rights. He said on Meet the Press that affirming the gender identities of teens is “cruelty.”

“When a kid is crying out for help,” Ramaswamy said. “You’ve got to ask the question of what else is going wrong at home? What else is going wrong at school? Let’s be compassionate and get to the heart of that rather than playing this game as though we are actually changing our medical understanding for the last hundred years.”

Not surprisingly, Ramaswamy has said he would ban gender-affirming care for minors.

His other positions on LGBTQ+ issues are equally right-wing. He complained that Target “spit in the face” of customers with its Pride merchandise. Overall, he thinks the LGBTQ+ movement seeks to “create an us-versus-them destruction of modern order.”

Ramaswamy is unlikely to amount to much of anything in the presidential race this time around. Trump is so far ahead in the polls that voters already have their minds made up. But the interest Ramaswamy is generating is a sign of just how far the Republican party has degenerated. You have to be transparently unserious to be a serious candidate.