Why Vivek Ramaswamy Came in 2nd in Iowa

Vivek Ramaswamy, with his wife, Apoorva, and son, Karthik, announces at the Surety Hotel in downtown Des Moines, Iowa, that he's ending his presidential campaign after a fourth-place finish in the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 15, 2024. John Haughey/The Epoch Times

Commentary

SNOWY DES MOINES AIRPORT, Iowa (trying to get home)—Yes, I’m well aware entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy came in fourth in the voting at the Iowa caucuses on Jan 15.

He received a highly disappointing, as he admitted himself, 7.7 percent of the vote.

But I’m adamant in my belief that in the more profound sense, for now and the future, he came in second—easily.

Why?

Primarily, because he dropped out.

Secondly, he immediately backed former President Donald Trump and offered to help with his campaign.

I was there for NTD when he made his announcement at Surety Hotel in Des Moines. His supporters were sad, of course, but overwhelmingly supportive of him and of President Trump when he urged them to support the former president wholeheartedly, saying their cause is the same.

With President Trump receiving a Republican caucus record-breaking 51 percent of the vote, Mr. Ramaswamy recognized what most of us have known for at least a year, maybe more.

The 45th president has always had this in the bag.

The polls have scarcely varied, for Iowa and just about everywhere else. In fact, most of us who follow politics have never seen such consistency, if we’re honest about it.

And yet Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and, needless to say, their ample and mysteriously determined financial backers, known and unknown, feel otherwise, as do almost all members of the left-wing media and a surprising number on the right who have a vested interest in the continuation of what most see as a foregone conclusion.

Meanwhile, arguably the most significant real election of American history, or at least since the Civil War, looms in November with our country either beginning to redeem its constitutional basis or proceeding headlong into a socialist oligarchy not dissimilar to communist China.

Mr. Ramaswamy acknowledged this on the night. Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley essentially shrugged, moving on as slaves to their ambitions in a meaningless battle for a distant second place.

I was one of those earliest in the media to spend time with Mr. Ramaswamy and his wife, Apoorva, when he agreed to do our initial “Presidential Roller Coaster: 2024.”

I found him an obviously very talented young man with views that largely coincided with mine. (There are foreign policy statements he has made that I question to varying degrees.)

I didn’t wonder why him, I wondered why now—why this campaign with President Trump already there, his constituency growing due to the horrifying weaponization of justice by the other side against him.

Mr. Ramaswamy did, to his credit, speak out far more forcibly than the other Republican candidates against this weaponization, but most of his campaign rested on his self-proclaimed “fresh legs.”

Yes, he’s younger, but maybe too young, despite the references to Thomas Jefferson writing the Declaration at the age of 33.

Now that his campaign is over, I’m going to ignore my childhood idol, the late Yogi Berra, and make one of those difficult “predictions about the future.”

If Mr. Ramaswamy is offered a position in the cabinet of President Trump and accepts it (as I urged him to do in the hubbub of the evening of Jan. 15), he may find himself in the very short time of four years to be the odds-on inheritor of the MAGA movement.

And if we’re all lucky, that will be a wonderful thing to inherit.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.