Ramaswamy and Christie, get outta here, now!
by Hugo Gurdon, Editor-in-Chief
December 29, 2023 10:10 AMPresidential primaries tend to produce one “interesting candidate.” The phrase is not wholly complimentary, for it identifies one of the hopefuls who have, in truth, no hope of winning. The candidate is evidently intelligent, highly unconventional, and less like any of the others than they are like each other.
In 2020, for example, when Democrats were assessing who should be their champion to take on then-President Donald Trump, the interesting primary candidate was Andrew Yang, who was relatively young, smart, successful, and had no chance of being picked by his party.
Now that Republicans are deciding who will take on President Joe Biden, the Democratic incumbent, the interesting candidate in the field of challengers is Vivek Ramaswamy. Actually, I should say he “was” rather than “is” the interesting candidate because he latterly has vied to be the most tedious and superfluous candidate of all.
His transformation from being interesting to being a grating embarrassment took about 45 minutes, by my count, from the opening bell to about halfway through the first Republican debate last August. While watching the encounter on TV, I was texting impressions back and forth with a couple of politically savvy friends. After 15 minutes, they asked who I thought was winning. At that point, Ramaswamy seemed the most fluent and effective, even though he was not who I’d choose for nominee. So I texted that I thought he was winning.
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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/ramaswamy-and-christie-get-outta-here-now
