Vivek

This is Joseph.

One unfortunate implication of the recent political landscape in US and British politics is the movement into a post-truth era for one of the parties. Here is the Telegraph defending Vivek Ramaswamy with ""By focusing on old shibboleths like fact and consistency, his critics make themselves sound arcane." But before we laugh too much, this is the 3rd ranked candidate for Republicans (now, to be fair, it might be inflated but, as the Telegraph notes, should facts get in the way?).

But this person is saying crazy things. Just looking at WIKIPEDIA we get gems like "Ramaswamy favors raising the standard voting age to 25" which is repealing a constitutional amendment. How does one get an amendment:

An amendment may be proposed by a two-thirds vote of both Houses of Congress, or, if two-thirds of the States request one, by a convention called for that purpose. The amendment must then be ratified by three-fourths of the State legislatures, or three-fourths of conventions called in each State for ratification. 

This is crazy unlikely. The path to 67 Republican senators, alone, would be extraordinary (they have 48 right now) and you are asking states to make themselves toxic to a big chunk of voters in the hope that the amendment ratifies.  I actually think repealing the second amendment has better chances and it remains fantastically unlikely. 

Or the delightful idea of abolishing agencies by executive fiat and firing 75% of federal employees and making them all "at will". Again, huge legislative and constitutional barriers exist to this plan and there is no clear way that such a massive reform could be enacted without a close relationship with congress (look at how Joe Biden gets all of his successes).  Instead he appears to want to rule by fiat, as a king instead of a president.

But who cares, it is all lies anyway because facts don't matter. 

He asked for truth about 9/11 and then denied that he did so. He got rich running with some extraordinarily well timed stock sales. Now he is using his campaign to delay testifying about his corporate dealings. 

So we have a person with a shady past, no attachment to facts, and no experience in government promising implausible things. How is this the best way to select a political leader? In any case, after how Brexit turned out, I hesitate to trust the UK right wing on, well, anything. 

P.S. Our editor also pointed out this particular tweet. The incoherence of the foreign policy positions of this candidate are remarkable. In particular, is the current Russian regime really the people you want to make deals with that depend, entirely, on their sense of integrity (they could take the concessions and just never really change their strategic relationship with China other than a couple of speeches that are later ignored).