MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin — With just 24 hours to go before the first Republican presidential primary debate of the 2024 campaign, Ohio entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy spent Tuesday evening as he has spent almost every waking hour since launching his bid for the White House in February: Campaigning.
Ramaswamy held a high-energy rally at downtown Milwaukee’s beer garden, just feet away from the Fiserv Forum, home of the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks and site of Wednesday evening’s debate. The outdoor venue was big enough to hold a packed crowd of supporters and the politically curious, as well as a throng of Wisconsin, national and international media, to hear from what many pundits see as the surprise candidate of the early 2024 campaign season.
Stepping on to the stage, Ramaswamy noted the zero-to-top tier rise he’s had over the past six months. That is, when he jumped into the race few knew who he was. The polls reflected that fact with flat line force.
A day before the debate, the political outsider is running in third place, and sneaking up on No. 2 GOP presidential candidate, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Ramaswamy, at 7.2 percent support and DeSantis (14.3 percent) are running far behind front-runner former President Donald Trump (55.4%) in the latest RealClearPolitics average of Republican Presidential Nomination polls. But Ramaswamy’s relentless campaigning and growing mastery of media channels has helped him close in on DeSantis, who has tallied some costly missteps since launching his great expectations-laden campaign in late May.
Ramaswamy’s rise in the polls have been so impressive that the once-unknown candidate will take center state with DeSantis at the debate, which begins at 8 p.m. Central Time on Fox News. The Republican National Committee set stage placement of the eight eligible candidates based on polling strength.
Ramaswamy will have a target on his back. The New York Times reported last week that DeSantis’ team has urged him to “hammer” Ramaswamy in the debate. Expect the same hammering of the No. 2 candidate.
Ramaswamy makes center stage thanks to Trump’s decision to forgo the first debate. The former president instead taped an interview with former Fox News host and popular conservative commentator Tucker Carlson that will run on X (formerly Twitter) at the same time as the debate.
But that’s not to discount the success and momentum Ramaswamy’s campaign has built.
His message of American Revival, a new “1776 Moment” in a free nation whose sacred liberties have been under attack in the COVID Age, has seemed to resonate.
“The question before us, do we still believe those ideals still exist,” he said of the values of the Revolutionary War fighters and the U.S. Constitution writers. “My answer is, yes. Yes, I still believe that those ideals exist. We are running in this race to revive them. With your help I believe we can do it.”
Ramaswamy, author of three books taking on the woke brokers in corporate America and government, is nothing if not confident. This is the same guy who on Monday posted on his X account a video of himself playing tennis shirtless, saying he was getting in “three hours of solid debate prep.”
Three hours of solid debate prep this morning. 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/luY1k3m0wN
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) August 21, 2023
As the youngest candidate in the field — he turned 38 this month — Ramaswamy has driven home the fact that he’s the first millennial to run for president as a Republican. Not an insignificant point in a 2024 presidential campaign dominated by an octogenarian Democrat president and a 77-year-old former president, at a time when voters have expressed concerns about the mental acuity of the President Joe Biden in particular.
Ramaswamy told rallygoers that his young sons won’t yet be in high school when he finishes up his second term in the Oval Office. That’s confidence, as misplaced as many pundits believe it to be. He said the debate is a mere starting point. The destination, the presidential contestant said, is being able to show what he’s able to accomplish in office. Doing away with the administrative state and eliminating what he calls the unelected “fourth branch” of government. Unfettering the United States from the commercial hold of its No. 1 enemy, Communist China. Securing America’s border.
“E Pluribus Unum. From many, one. That is what won us the American revolution. That is what reunited us after the Civil War. That is what won us two world wars and a Cold War,” he said. “That is the vision that still gives hope to the free world.”
“And if we can provide that dream over group identity and victimhood and grievance, then nobody in the world, not a nation, not a corporation, not a virus is going to defeat us. That is what American exceptionalism is all about. This is our 1776 moment. That is what we will revive to save this great nation,” Ramaswamy said to applause, urging his supporters to “make a lot of noise” at the debate for him.
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
