Vivek Ramaswamy’s best shot at power is as Trump’s campaign partner

livemint.com:

An absurdist scenario has played out for months in the bizarrely binary racial politics of the US, with one Indian-American identifying as “Black" in the vice-president’s office (Kamala Harris generally downplays her mother’s Tamil heritage) and another passing for “White" (Nikki Haley’s parents are Punjabi Sikhs) in her quest for the Republican party’s presidential nomination in a field of candidates that included Vivek Ramaswamy, the only undisguised Indian-American among the three, till he withdrew from the race this week. This mercurial 38-year-old entrepreneur splashed $17 million of his own money to garner only about 8,000 votes in Monday’s Iowa caucuses, a moment of truth that led him to drop out in support of Donald Trump, with the controversial ex-president hinting of a relationship: “It’s an honour to have his endorsement.

He’s gonna be working with us... for a long time." Ramaswamy rocketed to US attention with an unconventional internet-first strategy, relentless hard work and an eagerness to break Republican orthodoxy.

In the first televised debate last September, he channelled former president Barack Obama—who remains anathema to Republicans—by introducing himself as another “skinny guy with a funny last name" and quickly pivoted to slam his fellow candidates: “I’m the only person on this stage who isn’t bought and paid for." Two months later, he complained, “We’ve become a party of losers. It’s a cancer in the Republican establishment," then called for the party chairperson to resign on live television, and attacked Haley as “Dick Cheney in high heels" (referring to George Bush’s vice-president from 2000 to 2009).