Vivek Ramaswamy: preference

Transcript context

…Who do you think? So for me, I would love to see in some kind of future where it’s you versus somebody like Tim Walz. So to Tim Walz, maybe I’m lacking in knowledge, is first of all, a good dude, has similar to you, strongly held if not radical ideas of how to make progress in this country. So to just be on stage and debate honestly about the ideas, there’s a tension between those ideas. Is there other people? Shapiro’s interesting also. I would like to take on in earnest, in civil but contested context of a debate. Who do we want to take on? You want to take on somebody who disagrees with you but still has deep ideology of their own. I think John Fetterman is pretty interesting, right? He’s demonstrated himself to be somebody who is thoughtful, able to change his mind on positions, but not in some sort of fake flip-floppity, flippity-floppity way. But in a thoughtful evolution, somebody’s been through personal struggles, somebody who I deeply disagree with on a lot of his views and most of his views. But who I can at least say he comes across at least as somebody who has been through that torturous process of really examining your beliefs and convictions and has when necessary, been able to preach to his own tribe where he thinks they’re wrong. I think it’s interesting. I think that you have in a number of other leaders probably emerging at lower levels on the left. Not everybody’s going to necessarily come from Washington DC. In fact, the longer they’re there, the more they in some ways get polluted by it. I think the governor of Colorado, he’s an interesting guy. He’s got a more libertarian tendency. I don’t know as much about his views on it from a national perspective, but it’s intriguing to see somebody who has at least libertarian freedom-oriented tendencies within the Democratic Party. I think that there are a number of, I mean, I don’t foresee him running for president, but I had a debate last year when I was running for president with Ro Khanna who say what you will about him. He’s an highly intelligent person and is somebody who is at least willing to buck the consensus of his party when necessary. I think he recently, I would say lambasted, he phrased it very delicately, but criticized Kamala Harris’s proposed tax on unrealized capital gains. So I like people who are willing to challenge the orthodoxies in their own party because it says they actually have convictions. And so whoever the Democrats put up, I hope it’s someone like that. And for my part I have and continue to have beliefs that will challenge Republicans, that on the face of it may not be the policies that poll on paper as the policies you’re supposed to adopt as a Republican candidate, but what a true leader does doesn’t just tell people what they want to hear. You tell people what they need to hear and you tell people what your actual convictions are. And this idea that I don’t want to create a right-wing entitlement state or a nanny state, I want to shut it down. l people what they need to hear and you tell people what your actual convictions are. And this idea that I don’t want to create a right-wing entitlement state or a nanny state, I want to shut it down. That challenges the precept positions of where a lot of the conservative movement is right now. I don’t think the bill to cap credit card interest rates is a good idea because that’s a price control just like Kamala Harris’s price controls and it’ll reduce access to credit. I don’t think that we want a crony capitalist estate showering private benefits on selected industries that favor us or that we want to expand the CFPB or the FTC’s remit, and somehow we’re going to trust it because it’s under our watch. No, I believe in shutting it down. That challenges a lot of the current direction of the conservative movement. I believe in certain issues that, or maybe even outside the scope of what Republicans currently care about right now. One of the things that I oppose, for example, is this is not a top issue in American politics, but just to give you a sense for how I think and view the world, I’m against factory farming of a large scale of, you could sort of say putting the mistreatment of, it’s one thing to say that you need it for your sustenance and that’s great. But it’s another to say that you have to do it in a factory farming setting that gives special exemptions from historical laws that have existed that are the product of crony capitalism. I’m against crony capitalism in all its forms. I’m against the influence of mega money in politics. I don’t think that’s been good either for Democrats or Republicans. Some of those views I think are not necessarily the traditional Republican orthodoxy reading chapter and verse from what the Republican Party platform has been. It’s not against the Republican Party platform, but it’s asking what the future of our movement is.…

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