The Republican presidential debates have been noted largely by the absence of the runaway frontrunner, former U.S. President Donald Trump. Wednesday's debate, however, was noted by something else: Vivek Ramaswamy's spontaneous and passionate assessment of the party in the wake of election setbacks in Kentucky, Virginia, and Ohio the night before.
Democratic Governor Andy Beshear held his seat in Kentucky, Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin watched Virginia Democrats sweep both houses of the legislature, and Ohioans voted overwhelmingly to make abortion a state constitutional right.
Ramaswamy, at 5.3%, is running fourth in GOP polls, but nobody's close to Trump's 56.6%.
On Wednesday night, Ramaswamy – for a bit – shifted his focus away from the race and to the overall health of the Republican Party. It's not good, he said, blaming Republican National Committee (RNC) chair Ronna McDaniel.
Ramaswamy's rant carried the force of a Mike Tyson haymaker, his spokesman, Stefan Mychajliw, said on American Family Radio Thursday.
"It was like a Mike Tyson fight in his early heyday, where he just knew in 60 seconds he landed a punch and boom, he had won. The first 60 seconds, and we thought, 'Okay, he spoke the truth. He spoke the truth about the Republican Party, the fake news media. We can end the debate right now, Vivek won," Mychajliw told show host Jenna Ellis.
Ramaswamy took the party to task for a series of poor election performances under McDaniel's leadership. He challenged her to join the candidates on stage and resign.
Ramaswamy: RNC leads 'party of losers'
"We've become a party of losers. At the end of the day, it's a cancer in the Republican establishment. I speak the truth. Since Ronna McDaniel took over as chairwoman of the RNC in 2017, we have lost 2018, 2020, 2022, no red wave, it never came. We got trounced last night in 2023, and I think that we have to have accountability in our party," Ramaswamy said.
The very setting of the debate was an illustration of poor leadership, he said. It was held in Miami and moderated by a three-person panel of conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt and NBC News personalities Lester Holt and Kristen Welker.
"Think about who's moderating this debate. This should be Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, and Elon Musk. We'd have ten times the viewership, asking questions that GOP primary voters actually care about, and bringing more people into our party," Ramaswamy said. "Do we think the Democrats would actually hire Greg Gutfeld to host a Democratic debate? They wouldn't do it."
He then took Welker to task for her reporting during the months of the Trump administration in which the President was accused of having colluded with Russia to win office.
A series of investigations and lawsuits shot down those allegations, discredited what became known as the "Steele Dossier," the foundational source for those allegations, and exposed Trump rival Hillary Clinton's role in funding the research efforts of the dossier.
The Democratic National Committee and Clinton were ultimately fined by the Federal Election Commission for not properly disclosing money spent on "opposition research."
Russia collusion? Kristen Welker, what say ye?
"Kristen, I'm going to use this time, because this is actually about you and the corrupt media establishment, to ask you, the Trump Russia collusion hoax that you pushed on this network for years: Was that real or was that Hillary Clinton made-up disinformation? Answer the question. Go," Ramaswamy said.
Welker did not respond.
Mychajliw argued Ramaswamy just wants to root out what Americans needs to hear.
"He spoke the truth to them. Vivek Ramaswamy says all the time that, especially the youth of America, that they are hungry for a cause," he told Ellis. "They're lost, they're hungry for a purpose … and instead of turning to faith, God, religion, family, they're turning to the climate cult, the abortion cult, the COVID cult.
"And that's why Vivek Ramaswamy is running for president: To give our nation a purpose and to lead a national revival so that our youth are not lost in the desert," Mychajliw said. "You had career politicians taking their best shots at Vivek Ramaswamy, and he wiped the floor with the Republican establishment, the media, and career politicians."
