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Vivek Ramaswamy won the online attention contest in the GOP debate:Washington Post


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Vivek Ramaswamy came into the first debate of the 2024 Republican nominating contest prepared to do what he’s been doing, fairly successfully, for the duration of the campaign to date: pluck popular, often misleading rhetoric from the fringe of right-wing media and internet chatter and present it back to an audience that loves it. On the debate stage, that meant staking out position after position that made more seasoned politicians balk. Like saying climate change was a hoax. Or that he would stop funding for Ukraine’s defense. Or that he would pardon Donald Trump on his first day in office.

This approach, in fact, is one that proved very successful for Trump during his own entry into presidential politics in 2015. Trump, too, was unburdened by the normal constraints of political propriety or awareness; he, too, endorsed fringe positions he’d picked up from right-wing sources.

Ramaswamy’s ploy worked. Analysis of Google search interest — a good ***** for evaluating which debate participants triggered the most curiosity of viewers — indicates that no one saw a consistent level of interest equivalent to Ramaswamy during the debate’s two hours.

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