Ramaswamy visits Charles City on the road to the Iowa GOP Caucus

By Travis Fischer, tkfischer@charlescitypress.com

Republican presidential nominee candidate Vivek Ramaswamy visited Charles City on Thursday, Dec. 7, as he campaigns across the state ahead of the upcoming Republican caucus.

A crowd of supporters and the politically curious filled a meeting room at Pizza Ranch to hear what the anti-establishment candidate has to say about government and the future of the country.

Ahead of the campaign speech, Ramaswamy was introduced by Butler County farmer Kim Junker, who has been active in the opposition to carbon capture pipelines. Junker, who was named by Ramaswamy during the televised Republican debate the previous night, expressed her support for the candidate for discussing the issue on the national stage.

“He’s come out against the pipelines and he knows it’s unconstitutional,” said Junker. “He’s the only major candidate that understands property rights.”

Coming out to speak to the audience, Ramaswamy introduced himself as a revolutionary candidate intent on dismantling the federal bureaucracy by eliminating the career employees that work from one administration to the next and implementing mass layoffs of federal agencies.

“It is the deep state and these three letter agencies that are running the show today,” said Ramaswamy. “We’re going to get in there and actually shut them down.”

Ramaswamy shared his vision of dramatically scaling back federal law by taking advantage of the current ideological makeup of the Supreme Court to overturn past precedents that have allowed federal powers to expand over the years, limiting federal law to matters explicitly specified in the Constitution and requiring constitutional amendments before new issues can be addressed.

Following his stump speech, Ramaswamy opened the floor to audience questions, answering inquiries on issues ranging from border control to health care to the war in Ukraine, where he proposed negotiating an end to the conflict by allowing Russia to keep its captured territory in exchange for ending its strategic military relationship with China.

Holding establishment Democrats and Republicans in near equal contempt, Ramaswamy presented himself as a political outsider intent on toppling the establishment policies of both major parties, citing the lack of resistance from Iowa Republican leaders to carbon pipelines utilizing eminent domain as an example of the establishment serving itself above the voters.

“The Republicans are not much better than Democrats,” said Ramaswamy. “In some cases they’re worse.”