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I don't know if this post is a parody or not, but I have to ask how anyone looks at Vivek Ramaswamy and doesn't clock him as an obvious grifter.
I think signing on the R ticket and declaring we give too much money to Ukraine and Israel is a really bad way to grift. If you’re alleging he is in it for pure personal gain, that’s the last thing he would do. That’s alienating establishment political apparatus and pro-Israel donors.
Why is it bad? For Ukraine, it is increasingly becoming blue-coded issue, so running against it on a red ticket is at least a safe bet. Jews are dominantly voting blue, and big Jewish donors are already spoken for anyway, nobody of them would have any interest in some start-up nobody that they had no idea of his existence a month ago. So he loses nothing. On the contrary, in this very forum we can witness a certain group of people who, let's say, do not harbor any warm feelings towards Jews, and thus would gladly support somebody dunking on Israel. This group may not be huge, but it's still some money. Again, from the fundraising angle, maybe not the best strategy ever, but certainly a solid one. If he already going for polarizing candidate - which he seems to do anyway - taking positions with significant unserved red audience is not a stupid move, grift-wise.
Do people ever purposefully sell their social currency among the highest status to purchase social currency among the lower status? He works in pharma finance. Pro-establishment Jews and pro-establishment gentiles are his clientele, colleagues, and social judges.
My point is pro-establishment Jews vote Democrat, so Vivek, being a Republican candidate, can have no currency with them. To gain any possibility of their approval, he'd have to run as a Democrat for starters. Since he doesn't, he has to address some audience where he has a chance.
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That's an absolutely exceptional way to grift. People like Trump and Kari Lake have been doing it for years and raking in the small dollar donations by the millions for years.
When are you people going to realize that you are the establishment. You are the power now, so every time you sneer about the establishment neocons what you're actually doing is sneering as the heel to the face. The """"establishment"""" is terrified of voters that think like you do and have been bending over and spreading wide for almost a decade to try to please you. All they've gotten for it is cascading electoral failure. As someone who likes it when Republicans win, I'm not very happy about that.
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You're not grifting off big name donors, you're grifting the rank and file schmucks.
Why would you grift from the poor when you could grift from the rich? Makes no sense.
Too many people already on the rich's teats. Hard to distinguish oneself, especially when they insist on things like "respectability" and "experience" in their circles to join the establishment.
Much easier to just skip the entire cursus honorum and the years of ass-kissing and dues-paying it demands.
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Theory: There are more of the poor, and they might be easier to grift and less likely to sue you.
The Jordan Belfort story.
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That's if you assume the end goal of the grift is to get elected, rather than to get enough attention that he gets a permanent podcast presence.
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What's the grift? He's already pretty rich. I'm not clear what the angle is that would be better than just building another company. If the "grift" is that he doesn't really want to be a politician and is just pretending to be a politician so that he can get political power, I find that I'm puzzled.
That's never stopped anyone before. It certainly hasn't stopped Trump from shamelessly bilking his supporters.
Ramawamy strikes me as being at least as insubstantial as Trump (probably moreso, especially given that I think he's also significantly smarter). For as changeable as career politicians can be in their never ending quest to keep their jobs, they usually (contra the fatuous cynics) do have core values and goals they actually care about. I don't think Ramawamy believes anything. If he attains the White House, I expect him to accomplish nothing. Not because he was sabotaged by the "deep state" or stymied by congressional gridlock but because he doesn't care about accomplishing anything.
(Also, as a guy with zero experience in governing he's liable to be as competent as a child put behind the controls of a fighter jet, but that's tangential to the grifter aspect).
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The next step in the pyramid after money is power and admiration of the masses. But it doesn't really matter. In fact, a selfless adherent to an idiotic ideology is far more dangerous than a mere grifter. Or, as immortal C.S. Lewis said:
I'm going to be more concerned with the power-seeking nature of the career power-seekers on stage with him. If the claim is simply that politics is a grift, I don't disagree, but that's hardly an indictment of the only guy there that wasn't part of the swamp for decades.
Hard to say DeSantis was part of the swamp for decades
Decade, singular anyway. We may differ on the quality of his pre-political life.
I think being a jag attached to navy seals isn’t your paradigmatic example of the swamp.
I don’t think standing up to…pretty much everyone in 2020 re covid isn’t very swampish. Nor was actually fighting back in the culture war with schools in Florida or fighting with Disney.
I just see very little evidence he is part of the establishment. I do think he has the wrong people telling him how he needs to run his candidacy and needs to just be himself (which honestly is someone who is a bit of a dick but a relatively honest one).
I think the person talking about Vivek being the only person not ensconced in the swamp or whatever is being silly.
But, look into DeSantis pre-2020. He was deep with the Club for Growth, Chamber of Commerce, Koch Brothers, etc. Which is ya' know, what you do if you're a rising conservative star, but he wasn't some independent go-getter and hell, his SuperPAC currently has backing from every right-wing billionaire not on the Trump train.
LOL. I just got back from a local Chamber meeting. I'm not sure what you think it is, but I am sure it doesn't belong in the company you think it does.
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He was also freedom caucus in the house.
Yes he gets funding from non Trump billionaires on the right. But that doesn’t mean DeSantis is swamp. It means republican billionaires who don’t like Trump hope DeSantis can beat Trump. My point is look what DeSantis has done as a governor. It isn’t very swampy. His record is rather non establishment. Now maybe that was all a mirage. But it is far from obvious.
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