Republican presidential contender Vivek Ramaswamy says he is a better candidate than former President Donald Trump because the American electorate is hankering for a revolutionary leader who doesn’t drive them insane.
Mr. Ramaswamy, who in some polls is running as high as third place in the crowded Republican Party contest, boasts that he is better positioned than anyone else to build on Mr. Trump’s successes and carry forward the “positive essence” of the Make America Great Again movement.
“It requires combining that outsider, successful executive experience with something else that rarely coincides with that, which is a deep understanding of the Constitution and the laws of this country,” Mr. Ramaswamy said Wednesday in an interview with editors and reporters at The Washington Times. “I think I am the single candidate in the last 30 years who has the deepest understanding … of how to actually shut down the administrative state and the federal bureaucracy.”
He spoke of creating a “national revival” to deliver on the conservative dream of dismantling federal bureaucracies that “suck the lifeblood out of our constitutional republic.”
The 37-year-old biotech millionaire plans to announce his strategy to eliminate the FBI, Department of Education and Nuclear Regulatory Commission at a town hall event in New Hampshire on Thursday.
In his meeting with The Times, Mr. Ramaswamy said he can make more headway with the “America First” agenda than Mr. Trump because the former president makes roughly a third of the country “psychiatrically ill when he speaks.”
“The things that they otherwise would have agreed with, they vehemently disagree with because he said it,” Mr. Ramaswamy said. “We have a sort of political dysphoria that emerges where you have Republicans that start identifying as Democrats because they lose any mooring of their own psyche when Trump is in office, and I can’t explain that to you.
“But for whatever reason, at least so far, I have not had that effect on people,” he said.
Mr. Ramaswamy said Mr. Trump had the necessary executive experience as a businessman but lacked the constitutional expertise needed to understand the entire scope of his powers as president.
As a result, he said, Mr. Trump proved to be more of a reformer than a revolutionary.
“Do you believe in reform, or do you believe in revolution?” Mr. Ramaswamy said. “I’m the candidate, I think the sole candidate, who is actually unapologetically on the side of revolution. I think that is the only way forward.”
Mr. Trump missed the opportunity to, among other things, shutter the Department of Education, send the military to the U.S.-Mexico border and enact the sort of mass government layoffs that “I will bring to the city,” he said.
“We can’t make it as easy for them as Trump did,” he said.
The son of Indian immigrants, Mr. Ramaswamy has never run for public office.
Still, the married father of two and youngest candidate in the race has made a positive impression on Republicans as he barnstorms across the early primary states in search of voters looking for a fresh face willing to pick up where Mr. Trump left off.
His biggest obstacle, however, is Mr. Trump, who maintains a commanding lead in the nominating race. Mr. Ramaswamy is stuck in the single digits in polls.
Mr. Ramaswamy has been outpolling many political veterans in the race. He also has raised more money than some of his more seasoned rivals. He appears to have performed well enough to qualify for the first Republican presidential debate on Aug. 23 in Milwaukee.
He said his message is hitting home. He recounted that a woman sporting a Trump baseball cap at a recent stop in Iowa told him: “You have put me in an uncomfortable position. I am an always-Trumper, and yet you have me on the fence.”
Mr. Ramaswamy told The Times, “As we sit here in July, that is a fine place to be.”
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
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