Who are the declared candidates running for president in 2024?
6. Vivek Ramaswamy
Update: Vivek Ramaswamy suspended his presidential campaign Jan. 16 and endorsed Trump.
Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy launched his White House bid last February. In a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference last year, Ramaswamy warned of the danger posed by “three secular religions” that have the U.S. in a “chokehold.”
Ramaswamy identified the “woke racial religion that says your identity is based on your skin color” as the first problematic ideology engulfing the U.S. Ramaswamy outlined the tenets of this religion, namely that “your identity is based on your skin color” and “that if you’re black, you’re inherently disadvantaged, that if you’re white, you’re inherently privileged no matter your economic background or your upbringing — that your race determines who you are and what you can achieve in life.”
Other philosophies labeled by Ramaswamy as dangerous “secular religions” include the idea that “the sex of the person you’re attracted to has to be hardwired on the day you were born” while “your own biological sex is completely fluid over the course of your lifetime” and “the climate religion.” Ramaswamy attributed the rise of these religions to “a national identity crisis in America” resulting from the disappearance of “the things that used to fill our hunger for purpose: faith, patriotism, hard work [and] family.”
Ramaswamy also called for a “national revival” during his remarks at CPAC, which he contended could be achieved by “embracing the extremism, the radicalism of the ideals that set this nation into motion 250 years ago: Merit, free speech, open debate [and] self-governance over aristocracy.” He advised against viewing American politics as a battle between Democrats and Republicans, maintaining that it is instead “a battle between the managerial class and the everyday citizen, between the great reset and the great uprising.”
“When you divide it up that way instead of Republicans and Democrats, you got it 80/20 in [our] favor,” he said, forecasting “a 1980-style, 1984-style landslide election in this country if we get it right.” The presidential elections Ramaswamy mentioned in his address resulted in 489 and 525 electoral votes for Republican Ronald Reagan, respectively, a noticeable contrast to all of the elections since 1992, where no presidential candidate has surpassed 400 electoral votes.
Ramaswamy secured 3 delegates at the Republican National Convention based on his performance in the Iowa caucuses and has won 0.46% of the popular vote nationwide.
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: [email protected]
