Rising star Vivek Ramaswamy!!
It was just a couple of days ago that I posted my first column about this character, which asked the musical question “Who the fuck is Vivek Ramaswamy?”
Really. Who is this big-mouthed, happy-dancing huckster from Hell?
From where I was sitting, watching the highlights of the first Republican primary debate a few days ago, it looked as if the guy’d materialized out of thin air, perhaps beamed in from another dimension by a race of malevolent alien saboteurs, here on a mission to wreak unholy havoc. The event was supposed to showcase the usual suspects, and maybe give Chris Christie a chance to put the boots to Ron DeSantis as he’d once done to Marco Rubio, but instead there was this kid chewing up all the scenery and using up all the oxygen with his almost viciously cheerful fascist invective. Prior to that, I’m abashed to admit, he’d barely registered with any of us here at the Needlefish. Oh, his name had come up a few times, as we kept frazzled watch over the myriad political data streams blasting at us like a hundred over-pressurized fire hoses, most notably in the reporting on the hapless DeSantis’s leaked debate briefing notes, but no alarms had gone off. I guess he was sneaking in under the radar, or maybe his signal was nulled out by the clutter filter. We’d better check on that, it’s not supposed to happen. Anyway, we were all unawares. Then I flip to one of the news feeds, all bored and complacent, and it’s HOLY SHIT WHAT IS THAT?!?!? JESUS POLE-VAULTING CHRIST. SET DEFCON 1. SCRAMBLE ALL INTERCEPTORS. SOMEBODY GIVE ME A SITREP! I NEED BEARING, RANGE, AND ALTITUDE! ARROOOOGAH!! AROOOOOOOOGAH!!
Ladies and gentlemen, Vivek Ramaswamy was in the building. A star was born.
In the aftermath, everybody from MSNBC to Newsmax wanted a piece of him, so he did the rounds on all the Sunday shows, yapping his way glibly through the interview segments with a polished poise that ought to be beyond such a newbie to the scene. You get the feeling that in his prior life as a biotech entrepreneur he mastered the art of consultant-speak, the knack for spewing what I once called “a cunning mix of the intuitively obvious and the patently fraudulent”, and was simply substituting political buzzwords for whatever pseudo-scientific bafflegab he’d always used to mesmerize investors. You had to pay attention, and know something in the first place, to get a good whiff of the bullshit. He sounded that convincing. If you did know something (that is, if you had more than a grade-school understanding of the American system of government), it was obvious that Jimmy Jabberbox there didn’t know jack/shit about how anything works. On Meet the Press, reliable meathead Chuck Todd lobbed him a bit of a softball, asking him whether he thought Mike Pence had done the right thing on January 6 by certifying the election (a question he’d dodged at the debate). The easy answer would have been to say yes, at that point Pence was just following the law, though of course serious questions about the legitimacy of the election remained. That way he’d have sounded sane, sensible even, while still throwing a bone to the MAGA moonbats who continue to believe that the election was stolen, and it was within Pence’s power to overturn the result and install Trump as Dictator For Life. Easy-peasey. So what’s Vivek say? This:
This is a moment for a true national consensus where there’s two elements of what’s required for a functioning democracy in America. One is secure elections, and the second is a peaceful transfer of power. When those things come into conflict, that’s an opportunity for heroism. Here’s what I would have said: ‘We need single-day voting on Election Day, we need paper ballots, and we need government- issued ID matching the voter file.’ And if we achieve that, then we have achieved victory and we should not have any further complaint about election integrity. I would have driven it through the Senate, in my capacity as President of the Senate, I would have led through that level of reform, then on that condition certified the election results, served it up to the president — President Trump — then to sign that into law. And on January 7th, declared the re-election campaign pursuant to a free and fair election. I think that was a missed opportunity.
Essentially, blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda, Pence should have stood there and changed federal election laws, making that a condition of certifying the election in favour of Trump, yadda yadda.
Ummmm…what?
He thinks that poor, put-upon Mike Pence could have seized the moment, and imposed new laws on the whole country? Unilaterally? Like, he could have arrived with new draft legislation in his pocket, and said “by the Powers vested in me as President of the Senate, I proclaim this bill to be law, in force effective immediately, problem solved, and oh yeah, Trump won, thank you and goodnight”? By what authority? Under what process, for chrissakes? Just what does he imagine was within the ambit of Pence’s ceremonial vote-counting role that day? What does he think being “President of the Senate” entails, exactly? How does he think legislation becomes law? What does he think the House and the Senate are even for, if Pence can wave his hand and change the legal landscape on a whim? Supposing Pence did have such a magic legislative wand, how does it follow that changing the law today means Trump actually won back then? The fix is retroactive? Wait – was he suggesting the election should then have been re-run? Or what?
Holy shit, what a fraud this guy is. What a snake oil salesman. What a bullshitter. As they say in some Eastern European countries, his guts are moving the wrong way. It’s not that he actually believes that’s how government works, it’s that he doesn’t have the first clue, and doesn’t really care, because he knows he can make something up, spew it out with confidence, you know, do the patter, and people will assume that anything delivered with such serene confidence must be true.
If only he wasn’t right about that.
God, I hope this asshole is just a flash in the pan, and this doesn’t have to be the first of many Gomeys to come. Meanwhile, here you go, Vivek:
the needlefish 