‘America First 2.0’: Vivek Ramaswamy’s presidential campaign explained
Vivek Ramaswamy is the textbook definition of a political outsider: He’s 38 years old, independently wealthy and has never held public office — and that’s exactly why he says he’s the perfect candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Yahoo News explains how Ramaswamy is positioning himself as the face of the nationalist wing of the GOP and the sweeping changes he’s proposing to politics as we know it.
Video Transcript
- Vivek Ramaswamy is a political outsider. He's an independently wealthy entrepreneur who has never held public office. And that's exactly why he thinks he should be the next president of the United States.
VIVEK RAMASWAMY: We're sick and tired of professional politicians in both parties.
- Ramaswamy is a self-identified nationalist and is running on a far-right, so-called "anti-wokist" platform that he's calling--
VIVEK RAMASWAMY: America First 2.0, taking the America First agenda even further than Donald Trump did.
- But what does that actually mean? Well, Ramaswamy says it's time for big changes, like requiring a civics test or performing some kind of public duty, like military service, in order to be allowed to vote.
VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I think voting rates will skyrocket in this country amongst young people after we actually make it mean something.
- He's also proposing gutting federal agencies, like the FBI, CDC, IRS, and making major changes to the Departments of Commerce and Education in order to make things easier on small businesses.
VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Every once in a while, you need to turn it over.
- And while such major changes might seem improbable with both chambers of Congress relatively evenly split between the parties, a Ramaswamy administration could avoid Capitol Hill altogether.
VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I focused first on, what can the US president do on his own with constitutionally ordained executive power?
- According to Ramaswamy, the core of his platform is to heal the divisions within the United States. And despite some extreme views, he does see room for compromise on some hot-button issues like abortion, which he suggests should be left up to individual states and promotes that if and when bans are enacted, governments should follow up with subsidized child care.
VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Adoption, child care, even greater responsibility for men. I think that's how we turn this issue into being a less divisive one.
- In fact, Ramaswamy is so committed to the idea of national unity that while he's made no secret of his identity as a practicing Hindu, he seems determined not to talk about diversity at all.
VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Diversity is not our strength. Our strength is what unites us across that diversity.
- So while Ramaswamy entered the Republican primary as a political outsider, his platform is challenging the very idea of what that means.
VIVEK RAMASWAMY: This is the time for reform.
