Ramaswamy Reacts to DeSantis Memo

by Roger L. Simon

I reached out to Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy about the debate preparation memo before we all learned that Ron DeSantis had distanced himself from it, claiming “I haven’t read it. … It’s just something that we have and put off to the side.”

That memo was leaked several days ago to The New York Times and is said to be the work of the strategists at DeSantis’s Never Back Down PAC.

It advised DeSantis to “hammer” Ramaswamy, who has been surging in some polls, and brand him, ironically in Trumpian style, with labels such as “Fake Vivek” and “Vivek the Fake.”

Here’s Ramaswamy’s response that I received via email:

“My advice to any candidate is: Fire any political strategist who tells you what to say. The managerial class in political campaigns, as in the federal government, is a cancer. End it. It’s a shame that some candidates rely on their consultants for attack lines against their opponents as a substitute for their own message.”

Fair enough. But it’s a cancer that has already metastasized so deeply through our system there may be no way out, short of some drastic reversal.

We are already at a point that only the richest candidates who are able to self-fund their campaigns, such as Trump and Ramaswamy, can be trusted even somewhat to be free enough of their wealthy financial backers—via PACs or otherwise—to be expressing ideas that are actually their own.

Call that a constitutional republic in tatters.

One wonders who leaked the memo to The NY Times and why. Was it someone inside the DeSantis campaign who wanted to sabotage it? Someone in the PAC, for reasons only a Talmudist could fathom? I have no knowledge except to say that it’s an unfortunate moment for the Florida governor.

Yet more unfortunate is the headline on this article in the Aug. 20 Washington Examiner: “Mace criticizes DeSantis over ‘listless vessels’ remark: ‘Really beyond me’”

This is what U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) was referring to:

“DeSantis made the comment in an interview released Friday, saying, ‘If all we are is listless vessels that’s just supposed to follow anything that comes down the pike on Truth Social every morning, that’s not going to be a durable movement.’ This was an obvious jab to the followers of former President Donald Trump, who founded Truth Social after he was removed temporarily from X, formerly known as Twitter.

“While Mace is no friend to Trump, as the former president endorsed her opponent for reelection in 2022, she criticized DeSantis for attacking anyone in the Republican Party while he is campaigning for its nomination.

“‘I don’t know why anyone running for president would put down half of the electorate and identify them and call them listless vessels because they support the former president,’ Mace said on ‘Lawrence Jones Cross Country’ on Saturday. ‘Why he would do that while numbers are taken is really beyond me.’”

While his comment came in the context of him talking about GOP members of Congress who had endorsed Trump, it’s hard not to see how DeSantis is shooting himself in the foot here. Who does he think would be voting for him if he were to win the nomination? Does he want a significant number of them to stay home, feeling they have been insulted so crudely?

Speaking of MAGA Republicans, aka “deplorables,” because that’s to whom he was referring, I was among a fair number of them on Aug. 19.

These included Devon Nunes—CEO of the Trump Media & Technology Group and therefore the man in charge of the “dreaded” Truth Social, Kash Patel—and Rumble’s Dan Bongino—not exactly listless guys.

The occasion was a celebration of John Rich’s new album “The Country Truth.” Rich was playing all its songs—including the highly amusing, pro-free speech “I’m Offended”—to an SRO crowd at his Nashville, Tennessee, club Redneck Riviera, with all being streamed by Rumble.

The reaction was anything but listless. The joint was jumping and was rewarded by the announcement that “The County Truth” had debuted as No. 1 in country albums, No. 2 in all genres.

The feeling among these supposedly listless “deplorables” was that the right could actually win what Andrew Breitbart told us years ago politics was downstream of—the culture. Combine “The Country Truth” with Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond” (No. 1 single) and the film “Sound of Freedom” and it’s obvious that something is stirring.

First published in the Epoch Times.