Vivek Ramaswamy's skyrocketing popularity PROVES we need this one thing

I’ve closely followed Vivek Ramaswamy since before he announced his presidential candidacy in February 2023. At the time, he was largely dismissed as a rich, longshot “vanity candidate.” But something has happened since then that transformed the virtually unknown, uber-rich entrepreneur with an Indian name into “2024’s breakout candidate.”

After last year’s midterm election, Gov. Ron DeSantis, reelected in a historic landslide, was supposed to be this year’s candidate to watch. Prior to May 24, 2023, when he officially confirmed his bid for the White House, DeSantis was arguably the right’s most exciting candidate. But after an inspirited announcement video and an awkward Twitter Space chat with Elon Musk, the governor’s campaign failed to take off.

Donald J. Trump warned DeSantis that a head-to-head competition between the two men would only hurt the latter. Seemingly, he was right.

While DeSantis boasts an impressive track record, his polling figures have left even his staunchest supporters disheartened. Averages dating back to January 6 of this year illustrate a neck-and-neck contest between the competing candidates, with Trump at 42.5 percent and DeSantis in close pursuit at 40.5 percent. Presently, these figures tell a different story, with Trump leading at 54 percent while DeSantis lags significantly behind at a mere 15 percent.

And then there’s Vivek.

Maybe it’s just me, but my Twitter feed is constantly inundated with news about Mr. Ramaswamy, all of it positive. Even as Trump is bogged down with endless indictments and, on some days, DeSantis seems to go MIA, Vivek appears to be everywhere, almost as if he’s harnessed Hermione Granger’s Time-Turner. In fact, Politico ran a piece in May titled: “No, you're not going crazy. Vivek Ramaswamy is everywhere.”

That was over three months ago; his breakneck pace has only accelerated since then.

“The everywhere-all-at-once strategy, and the former biotech tycoon's talent for presenting bomb-throwing anti-establishment sentiment in an affable package, has made him the closest thing the GOP primary has had to a breakout star,” Time Magazine reported. “Since launching his campaign in February, Ramaswamy has been going nonstop: shaking hands in New Hampshire, rapping Eminem verses in Iowa, appearing on more than 70 podcasts and nearly every news program that will have him, and producing a stream of online content more voluminous than any of his competitors. Suddenly, Ramaswamy is running in second or third place in multiple national polls and often outperforming governors and a former vice president in the early states.”

Some have attributed Vivek’s newfound success solely to his working harder than anyone else. That's certainly a part of it. One doesn’t climb from obscurity to stardom for nothing. Most of us couldn't even pronounce his name four months ago; now, it’s a household name.

But regardless of what you think about Vivek, his skyrocketing popularity proves at least one thing about today’s political climate: the American people crave a positive, affirmative vision.

SEE ALSO: Presidential candidate endorses Convention of States, challenges other candidates to do the same

Vivek Ramaswamy has been harping on this point since before he appeared on most people’s radar. Last year, in a must-watch, two-hour conversation with Ben Shapiro, he spoke extensively about the need for clearly defining the conservative worldview. He and Ben noted that “old-school” conservatives used to have at least a semi-cohesive philosophy, articulated by visionaries such as Milton Friedman and others. Due to the movement’s failure to adapt to more militant leftism, Vivek argued, it has largely been left in the dust, which, although not necessarily a bad thing in itself, robbed conservatism of the intellectual rigor that once defined it.

“The problem with much of the post-libertarian right, or what you could call lowercase-p populist right,” he said, “is that it doesn’t rest on a philosophy or a set of principles. It’s an emotion that is frustrated—correctly so, by the way—with the failures of courage… of the classical conservative, neoliberal right… but also frustrated with” the left’s cultural dominance.

“What the future of the conservative movement demands,” he continued, “is bringing the intellectual rigor of actually having a principled, ordered worldview from the historically classical right, but applying that to a starting point and a status quo that recognizes the fact that we’re not starting from neutral territory…. We as a movement have not done the hard work of defining what that affirmative vision actually is.”

Vivek, somewhere between the failures of yesteryear’s standard-bearers and the failure of having no standard at all, is not alone in decrying today’s overly reactionary right. Last year, I attended a political conference at which Jeremy Boreing, CEO of The Daily Wire, delivered a genuinely brilliant speech about the importance of not being simply anti-left but carefully articulating our own values and vision for the future. Sadly, fellow attendees dismissed the speech as “boring”—ironically—compared to others, which were packed primarily with dopaminergic snubs about “evil” Democrats. They wanted explosive, feel-good rhetoric, and in that regard, Boreing undelivered.

SEE ALSO: WATCH: How Article V of the Constitution can reverse tyranny

Vivek is right in noting that defining an affirmative vision is hard work, a task we have rebuffed for years. But the American people are tiring of the impassioned but useless political melees. Of course, fighting fire with fire is incalculably better than not fighting at all, the great failure of neoliberalism and Bush-era conservatives. But are we fighting for anything? Or are we simply fighting because we’re anti- fill in the blank? It seems voters aren’t sure. And that’s why Vivek is out on the campaign trail, every day defining what we ought to fight for.

Whether Vivek’s particular vision is the correct one or not isn’t for me to decide. What is clear is that at least a sizable subsect of the population—whether they knew it before his candidacy or not—is hungry for such a message. The American people are hungry for an ordered, intellectually compelling worldview espoused by standard-bearers who are not too principled to fight. Anyone seriously interested in persevering this nation ought to consider how they can help construct and advance that vision.

Of course, perhaps the greatest example of that over the past ten years has been Convention of States, which has given millions of patriots an affirmative vision to fight for. To join Vivek Ramaswamy and others, including Ron DeSantis, Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and Ben Shapiro, in support of Convention of States, sign the petition below.