Posobiec asked Beattie to explain how the phenomenon of Ramaswamy has come about, someone "who I don't think people knew existed six months ago." A new national poll has Ramaswamy tied with DeSantis for second place, even though the former doesn't have a history of being involved in politics.
"Well, we've seen this story before," Beattie said. "It's almost as though it's an advantage not to have been a career politician because you're a talented person applying yourself in some other domain. Vivek was a very successful entrepreneur, highly educated, highly intelligent. His IQ clearly does a lot of work for him. He's incredibly articulate. And not only is he articulate, but he's substantively articulate in the sense that he's giving voice to a lot of issues that haven't been talked about in our political discourse for a long time."
"He has been exceptional on the problem of affirmative action that is now kind of front and center in the political scene with the Supreme Court case. He understands, on a deep level, what affirmative action is, and how it corrodes our body politic in so many different ways. And so he's become a new kind of political candidate that represents a kind of meritocratic, entrepreneurial kind of tech, Silicon Valley-inflected libertarian conservative politics that is, of course, very MAGA in its expression right now."
Posobiec cut in, suggesting that Ramaswamy is filling a gap in the political fight that wasn't supposed to be there. He said that the conservative primaries were supposed to be "DeSantis v Trump. Now suddenly, we're looking at Trump pulling away and getting into this DeSantis v Ramaswamy situation. How has it come to this?"
"Well, it is remarkable, but again, it shouldn't be that much of a shock after the Trump phenomenon of 2016," Beattie said. He mentioned that establishment politicians used to enjoy certain protections that they don't necessarily have anymore, given the prevalence of social media and alternative forms of media. He said that DeSantis was "I think, a very, very competent, very capable governor, but he's showing that he just can't really hack it on the national political stage here, and he's flailing about, and it looks like he's going to be suppressed by another political upstart."
