00:00:52.760Midterms punish incumbent parties, and Trump's approval has been tanking.
00:00:56.240The war in Iran is unpopular, fuel prices have been surging, and voters remain angry about affordability.
00:01:02.600Republicans still control Congress, but they've struggled to turn that control into accomplishing anything that voters can actually see or feel.
00:01:10.040But Ramaswamy presents an additional problem, one the party created for itself.
00:01:14.000The Cincinnati native was born in 1985 to Indian immigrant parents.
00:01:19.300His father came to the United States on a student visa and later worked for General Electric.
00:01:24.280His mother obtained a green card and became a physician.
00:01:27.200Vivek became a citizen at birth under the 14th Amendment.
00:01:30.800In other words, he's what's commonly referred to as an anchor baby.
00:01:38.180Ramaswamy built his fortune in biotech.
00:01:40.520His company, Roivant, created Axavant around Interpadine,
00:01:44.400an experimental Alzheimer drug licensed from GlaxoSmithKline for $5 million up front.
00:01:51.060Axavant's 2015 IPO raised $315 million and briefly pushed the company's valuation near $3 billion.
00:01:59.240In 2017, the drug failed its Phase 3 trial, and Axavant's stock fell about 70% in a day.
00:02:06.260That history has generated plenty of suspicion among Romaswamy's critics,
00:02:09.920especially because Roy Vant raised $1.1 billion shortly before the trial results.
00:02:16.280Suspicion isn't proof of fraud, of course, but the fact is that Ramaswamy made his name,
00:02:21.640selling investors on a speculative biotech story that ended up in spectacular failure.
00:02:27.180Then he tried to sell voters another story.
00:02:29.860Ramaswamy entered the 2024 presidential race as a long shot and positioned himself as Trump's most loyal rival.
00:02:36.700He attacked the administrative state, denounced wokeness, and rarely aimed sustained fire at the frontrunner.
00:02:43.000The campaign raised his national profile, even though he never seriously threatened Trump, which was kind of the whole point.
00:02:49.640Vex served as a surrogate for Trump for the rest of his campaign, and after election, it seemed like his plan had worked.
00:02:57.040Trump tapped Ramaswamy and Elon Musk to lead the Department of Government Efficiency, and then came the Christmas crash-out.
00:03:04.180During a fight over HB1 visas, Ramaswamy argued that American culture had venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long.
00:03:13.940He contrasted prom queens with math Olympiad champions, jocks with valedictorians, sleepovers with math tutoring, and popular television characters with nerds.
00:03:24.520Vivek made it very clear that while he was talking about the greatness of America and all the things he valued about it,
00:03:31.420he really saw himself as being separate and apart he had a different immigrant culture which was
00:03:37.460superior to that of the average american and that's why he was succeeding while all these
00:03:42.400other loser americans they were failing they had american ideas but he had immigrant ideas that
00:03:49.380were better and that's why he was out competing everybody else this is a clear disdain for the
00:03:54.160very people you're claiming to want to assimilate with from morning hockey with a cup of coffee
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00:04:16.340the backlash on the right was immediate and deserved because the argument landed as more
00:04:21.920than a defensive skilled immigration ramaswamy appeared to be telling ordinary americans that
00:04:26.780foreign workers were outperforming them because immigrant families possessed a better culture.
00:04:31.680The Post didn't single-handedly end his role in the administration, but it certainly didn't help.
00:04:36.960Reporting at the time described deep disagreements with Musk over Doge's mission,
00:04:42.320plus Ramaswamy's plan to run for governor. But the H-1B fight clearly worsened tensions and
00:04:47.780damaged his standing with parts of Trump's coalition. Ramaswamy launched his Ohio campaign
00:04:53.240in 2025 and quickly received Trump's endorsement and the backing of the state GOP. On paper,
00:04:59.520the arrangement looked ideal. A famous candidate, a Republican-leaning state, and a president who
00:05:04.580remained popular with a GOP base. Then the national environment deteriorated and the
00:05:09.200candidate's own liabilities became harder to hide. Turns out Vivek is going to have to win this one
00:05:14.120on his own, and that's not looking great. One of those liabilities is religion. Ramaswamy has
00:05:19.620always been cagey with voters on the question of faith. He was careful to talk about a shared
00:05:24.920belief in God, but he was never really clear about which one. He would share pictures of
00:05:29.700Christian pastors praying over him, but would fail to mention that he didn't share their faith.
00:05:34.660Ramaswamy is a pagan Hindu who believes in a host of foreign deities. While he would praise
00:05:39.700Christian values as central to America, he doesn't actually share them. This once again reveals a
00:05:45.340lack of sincerity that turned off many voters who were already feeling disillusioned with the GOP.
00:05:50.860A sharper identity dispute concerns immigration and assimilation. Vivek became a symbol of the
00:05:56.300H-1B fight because he defended a visa program that's heavily used and abused by Indian professionals
00:06:02.020while criticizing native-born American culture. Immigration skeptics saw the combination as a
00:06:07.540confirmation of their fear that Republican donor and business classes value imported labor more
00:06:13.380than people who are already here. Fairly or not, Vivek became the avatar for that argument.
00:06:19.520This is basically the Vivek question that now confronts the GOP. A party can nominate a
00:06:24.920candidate who checks all the ideological boxes on paper and even has some of those great diversity
00:06:30.100boxes that the GOP pretends they don't care about but they really, really, really do. And even if
00:06:35.360the candidate meets all those requirements, they can still discover that the voters don't really
00:06:39.760trust his instincts, his biography, or his cultural loyalties. Party leaders can explain
00:06:45.540that the alternative would govern much further to the left. They can point to endorsements,
00:06:50.100policy positions, and the partisan leaning of the state. But what they can't do is manufacture
00:06:54.980something that's really critical in every election. Enthusiasm. The newest polling
00:07:00.120illustrates the cost. Marist finds independence breaking for Acton 57% to 32%. Now, those numbers
00:07:07.980don't prove that Vivek is the one cause. National conditions may explain a decent amount of what's
00:07:13.460happening here, but Republicans shouldn't pretend that candidate selection played no role simply
00:07:18.600because acknowledging it would be deeply uncomfortable. Vivek spent years mastering
00:07:23.520the language of the populist right, but the real question is whether enough voters believe that
00:07:28.360that language actually reflects conviction rather than calculation. If the answer to that question
00:07:34.040is no then the problem didn't begin with the polls and it's not the voters who caused this
00:07:38.900it began with the republican leaders who assumed that saying all the right things having all the
00:07:43.820boxes checked was the same as being trusted by the people who are expected to vote ultimately
00:07:49.320a lot of people feel like vivek is another humiliation ritual they have to go through
00:07:54.400yes they don't want to vote for a democrat no they don't want to stay home and make sure that
00:07:58.520a Democrat is in charge, so they'll show up, they'll do their best. But this is not invigorating,
00:08:04.680this is not exciting, it's a humiliation ritual. Check this box for a guy who hates your culture,
00:08:10.360because if not, someone who hates your culture more might be in charge. This is more than just
00:08:15.520the lesser of two evils. It's embarrassing.
00:08:28.520do so. If you want to get these broadcasts as podcasts, you need to subscribe to The Oren
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00:08:47.040below in the description. You can pick up my book, The Total State, on Amazon. And of course, you can
00:08:52.160watch all of my shows and read all of my columns at The Blaze. Thanks for watching. And as always,