Oh Noes!! Vivek Ramaswamy "Confronts Racism" From Within His Own Party After Securing Nomination

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Ramaswamy, 40, won the GOP nomination easily Tuesday, but an obscure primary opponent, Casey Putsch, secured about 18 percent of the vote while assailing “third worlders,” invoking “blood and soil” language used by Nazis and attacking Ramaswamy as an “Indian boy [who] cosplays an American.” Many Republicans dismiss people like Putsch as online agitators who are best ignored — but some are still unnerved by the traction they have gotten despite their embrace of open bigotry. The ugliness has made the Ohio governor’s race one front in a broader GOP debate over extremism and what to do about it, stoked by the rise of white supremacist influencer Nick Fuentes and other like-minded commentators. Some Republicans want to draw a harder line against them and the racial resentments that others on the right have stoked to win elections and cultural influence.

Ramaswamy’s opponents on the right say they aren’t going away. Putsch cast his showing on Tuesday as a victory, noting that his campaign raised about $120,000 — far less than Ramaswamy’s — and lacked the institutional support of the GOP and President Donald Trump, who endorsed Ramaswamy early, “It really doesn’t matter if we’re fringe,” said Joel Webbon, a Christian nationalist pastor with more than 100,000 followers on X who joined Putsch in Ohio this past weekend for a conference where speakers railed against “Jewish influence" and “third world" immigration. Putsch, he said, “doesn’t have to win in order to prove the legitimacy of our movement.”

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Putsch billed himself as a “true American” alternative to Ramaswamy, launching a long-shot campaign that personified the issues Ramaswamy had raised at the Turning Point conference. He embraced followers of Fuentes; he shared a mocking depiction of Ramaswamy as a blue Hindu deity; he posted a gun-wielding video in which he asked Ramaswamy if he wanted to play “Cowboy versus Indians.” “Bad painter,” he said when an independent journalist asked him to say something negative about Hitler.

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The next day, an eclectic group of long-shot candidates and influencers from around the country gathered at a mansion outside of Columbus for an “America First” conference — a showcase of the online fringe that Ramaswamy had denounced. Webbon called for “race realism” and a “pro-White” America. Followers of Fuentes mingled, one of them wearing a blue groyper hat bearing the influencer’s initials. Speakers went beyond criticism of Israel to explicitly denounce the influence of Jewish people in the U.S. “Another f---ing Indian,” a woman said when someone mentioned FBI Director Kash Patel. Putsch addressed the group of several dozen in a small, ornate room, predicting Ohio voters would “burn Vivek’s campaign to the ground” if he advanced to the general election.

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https://wapo.st/4fcxvMI

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/05/08/vivek-ramaswamy-racism-ohio-governor/