At last night’s Turning Point USA event, Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy channeled his inner George H. W. Bush, calling for a “kinder and gentler” MAGA movement: No longer should we concentrate on “defeating the left” or “owning the libs.”
Here’s his speech:
At the 3:14 min. mark, he said:
The truth is, we face a hard choice ahead for our movement. It is a fork in the road. It is a fork in the road for the future of the conservative movement. And it’s a hard question to ask ourselves: Is our goal to defeat the left, or is our goal to save the country? Last year, I believed these goals were one and the same. But going forward, I don’t think they quite are.
An Axios preview described his speech as “No more ‘owning the libs’: Ramaswamy pushes sharp break for GOP”:
Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy on Tuesday plans to call on the GOP to embrace a less overtly belligerent and oppositional posture, Axios has learned.
- According to his prepared remarks, Ramaswamy will say the conservative moment is at a "fork in the road" and urge them to abandon its fixation on "owning the libs" in favor of a less overtly confrontational posture.
- "We can still stand for truth, while viewing those who believe in falsehoods not as our enemies who must be vanquished, but instead as our fellow citizens who have lost their way and must be shown the light," Ramaswamy will say.
- "Not to berate them, embarrass them, and banish them -- but to pray for them, to talk to them, and to persuade them," he will add.
The Axios preview was eye-opening because it was almost certainly leaked by Ramaswamy himself. (Axios made no mention of how it accessed the speech. Typically, when cloak-and-dagger investigative journalism is involved, the outlet brags about its sources and/or methodology — but when a story is handed to ‘em on a silver platter, they don’t. In this case, Axios simply said they “learned” of the speech’s contents.)
And because Ramaswamy is currently a candidate for political office, there are two ways to divine his intent:
- It’s purely a political play, driven by self-interest: Ramaswamy hopes to “brand” himself to Ohioans as a less-divisive figure, because he thinks it will be electorally helpful.
- Foregoing “owning the libs” and switching rhetorical strategies is something he genuinely believes is vital for MAGA to continue.
At the 4:41 mark, Ramaswamy held to the Axios preview:
…we can still stand for those [pro-MAGA] truths while viewing those who believe in falsehoods not quite as our enemies who must be conquered, but instead as our fellow citizens who’ve lost their way and must be shown the light. Not to berate them and banish them, but to pray for them. And even on rare occasions, to actually persuade them….
During his 2024 presidential bid, Vivek Ramaswamy wasn’t a “kinder and gentler” candidate. Instead, he was brash, aggressive, borderline rude, and unapologetically in-your-face. During the fourth GOP presidential debate, he relentlessly bashed Nikki Haley, dubbing her “Dick Cheney in three-inch heels,” and then turned his notebook into a prop, proudly holding it up for the cameras: “Nikki = Corrupt.”
But now, oddly enough, he’s stealing a page from a 2018 Nikki Haley speech at Turning Point USA:
Raise your hand if you've ever posted anything online to quote-unquote own the libs. I know that it's fun and that it can feel good, but step back and think about what you're accomplishing when you do this. Are you persuading anyone? Who are you persuading? We've all been guilty of it at some point or another, but this kind of speech isn't leadership. It's the exact opposite.
It’s a peculiar political calculation: After Donald Trump obliterated the GOP pretenders in 2024 (Haley and Ramaswamy included) and locked up the Republican nomination for the third time in a row — and then won an electoral landslide over Kamala Harris — most Republican candidates, you’d assume, would copy Trump’s strategy.
After all, he just proved it’s successful: Trump won Ohio by 11.3 points!
Not Ramaswamy. Instead, he’s copying Nikki Haley, sans the three-inch heels (presumably).
Meanwhile, there are fewer moderates and undecideds to “persuade” than ever before:
In 2016, voters who were still undecided in October made up about 8% of voters. But in 2020, that figure dropped to just 4%.
By 2024, the number of undecideds dropped to 3%:
When the undecided are defined as those who don’t know who they will vote for in the presidential race, there seems to be only a small number of them. The August 2024 F&M Poll found only three percent of voters were undecided…
On the left and the right, there’s been a dramatic rise in partisan intensity and political polarization. As a result, the number of self-declared moderates has shrunk to an all-time low of just 34%.
Which is why political campaigns are now won and lost on the basis of turnout.
Fighting over moderates and undecideds is a fool’s errand: There’s not enough of ‘em to win a majority.
Say what you want about “owning the libs,” but if it mobilizes conservatives and demotivates liberals, it’s an effective strategy for today’s voters.
Furthermore, it’s not at all clear that “owning the libs” lessens our ability to persuade. Mockery and ridicule are powerful rhetorical devices! Always have been; probably always will be. And in today’s age of clickbait headlines and information overload, a well-crafted zinger or snarky meme can cut through the commotion, giving conservatives an opportunity to voice their opinions.
And besides, what’s the alternative? To rely on the mainstream media?
A big reason why “owning the libs” was so useful is that it allowed conservatives to bypass the liberal media gatekeepers!
President Trump mastered the art of leapfrogging the media, taking his case directly to the American people via social media, clever memes, and biting one-liners. “Owning the libs” wasn’t done for its own sake, but out of political necessity.
Vivek Ramaswamy not only understood this in 2024; he embraced it. He elevated “owning the libs” to “owning the RINOs.” Ramaswamy called Nikki Haley a “fascist” and compared her campaign video to “a woke Dylan Mulvaney Bud Light ad.”
But today, Vivek Ramaswamy is Nikki Haley light. Very strange.
Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s shallow, self-serving political posturing by a gubernatorial candidate. Because otherwise, Vivek Ramaswamy doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about.
One Last Thing: The Schumer Shutdown is upon us. Rather than put the American people first, Chuck Schumer and the radical Democrats forced a government shutdown for healthcare for illegals. They own this.
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