Republican Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy stopped by Tucker Carlson's Twitter-based (sorry, "X, formerly known as Twitter, -based") television show this week for an interview that exposed the flaws in the candidacy that nationally is third in the RealClearPolitics average.
It was a disappointing, verging on disqualifying, outing, both in substance and in style.
In substance, Ramaswamy signaled that on foreign policy, he'd be worse than Biden or Obama. "We have no discernable national interest at issue in Ukraine," Ramaswamy said. "We are on our way to Ukraine turning into another Iraq or Vietnam all over again."
How about the national interest in not having dictators send tanks to gobble up neighboring European countries? If anything, it was the paralyzing fear by Presidents Obama and Biden of another Vietnam that emboldened Putin's Russia to invade Ukraine this time around. The Obama and Biden administrations let Syrian aggression pass, let Russia invade Crimea in 2014, and then fled Afghanistan in 2021. Ukraine is not in danger of being another Iraq or Vietnam in terms of a quagmire for American troops; if anything, it's in danger of becoming another Czechoslovakia, where a Russian victory is a loss for freedom and democracy and for American prestige.
The Ramaswamy Doctrine of abandoning former American friends to the predations of enemy dictatorships applies, apparently, not only to Ukraine but also to Taiwan. In the Carlson interview, the Republican presidential candidate sent Beijing a message to please wait patiently for America to stand up a domestic microchip-manufacturing capability. After that, which Ramaswamy said would be accomplished in his first presidential term, the Republican gave the communists essentially a green light to seize the democratic island. "I will not send our sons and daughters to die over someone else's nationalistic dispute," Ramaswamy said.
If the substance was full of surrender, the style was similarly repellent. Ramaswamy stood by without objecting while Carlson referred to "the goons at the Wall Street Journal editorial page." Without those "goons" running plenty of pieces by Ramaswamy, his candidacy wouldn't be regarded as seriously as it is. Worse, Ramaswamy stood by without objecting while Carlson made tasteless comments about neoconservatives. "All the war porn, they love that," Carlson said. "Is there a single neocon with a happy personal life?...It does seem like their project has nothing to do with helping the United States in any way. And it is psychosexual or something. They're for war, war, as long as other people fight it...."
Ramaswamy replied, "There is a certain titillation you see...."
Carlson responded, about the neocons, "If your wife respected you, you probably wouldn't have to talk that way...."
The American public deserves a more civil discourse than these crude and false accusations about bloodthirsty neoconservatives working out their family issues with the lives of American soldiers. The accurate answer to the question about "is there a single neocon with a happy personal life" is "sure, there are plenty, and anyway Tucker these sort of ad hominem arguments should be beneath you."
The tragedy of all this is that Ramaswamy's diagnosis of what ails America is fairly accurate. He said that what he calls "cult-like belief systems" have, for the left, replaced traditional religion, and that what the country needs is "a positive revival of what unites us," namely, the 1776 spirit of individual, family, nation, God. That message is resonating with Republican voters. There's nothing positive or unifying about vilifying neoconservatives while surrendering Ukraine and Taiwan. If Ramaswamy continues on in this vein, he won't earn a place in the White House. And as someone who knows a thing or two about 1776, let me just say that Samuel Adams would have been horrified by the exchange.