By Amoli Deshpande – Correspondent

Vivek Ramaswamy, a political outsider, announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president of the United States. 

Ramaswamy will be the second Indian American Republican candidate, alongside former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley. He has no previous experience running for political office. He is a Biotech and healthcare entrepreneur who has written two books, Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence and Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam. 

The Republican primary field is still in its early stages, with multiple Republicans still suggesting they might run. The major Republican candidates currently include former President Donald Trump, who announced his third candidacy in November 2022, and Nikki Haley who announced her bid for the office of President of the United States in February 2023. 

Ramaswamy says that Americans have lost their sense of purpose and meaning of what an “American” is. “America is in the midst of a national identity crisis. We hunger for purpose at a moment when faith, patriotism and hard work are on the decline. We embrace secular religions like Climatism, Covidism and gender ideology to satisfy our need for meaning, yet we can’t answer what it means to be an American,” said Ramaswamy. 

He says he is running for president so that he can redefine what the “American dream” is about. “That’s why I am running for president. I am launching not only a political campaign but a cultural movement to create a new American Dream—one that is not only about money but about the unapologetic pursuit of excellence,” he said.

Ramaswamy says that he doesn’t find being a political outsider a problem as he believes the platform he is running on will change America for the better. “It may seem presumptuous for a 37-year-old political outsider to pursue the highest office in the land, but I am running on a vision for our nation—one that revives merit in every sphere of American life,” said Ramswamy.

A large part of Ramaswamy’s presidential platform is that he wants to introduce a form of meritocracy within the United States. He says that meritocracy will make Americans only get ahead because of the amount of hard work they do. “That’s why I am proud to say tonight that I’m running for United States president. To revive those ideals in this country.  Those basic rules of the road, meritocracy, the idea that you get ahead in this country not on the color of your skin but on the content of your character,” said Ramaswamy.

The probability of Ramaswamy obtaining the Republican nomination seems grim. According to a Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll, Ramaswamy only got 1% of the poll’s vote. 

 His announcement has faced backlash from Democratic leadership. Jaime Harrison, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, says that Ramaswamy is running a candidacy of right-wing extremism by announcing his candidacy for president of Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Show. He says that the Democratic Party will fight this extremism within the Republican Party. “As Vivek Ramaswamy uses Tucker Carlson’s show to announce his campaign for president, one thing is clear: The race for the MAGA base is getting messier and more crowded by the day,” said Harrison. 

“Over the next few months, Republicans are guaranteed to take exceedingly extreme positions on everything from banning abortion to cutting Social Security and Medicare and we look forward to continuing to ensure every American knows just how extreme the MAGA agenda is,” he added.