With polling showing Donald Trump is running away in the race for the Republican Party's 2024 presidential nomination, his rivals for the top spot are increasingly proposing extreme and dangerous suggestions for what they would do if they somehow pulled off a miracle and won the November 2024 general election.
According to an analysis by Norman Ornstein and Donald Kettl, there appears to be an "arms race" to promise the most outrageous plan to dismantle the U.S. government, many of which would be well beyond the reach of a sitting president -- thus indicating many of the candidates have no idea what they are talking about.
The central focus of the authors' report in the New Republic is businessman Vivek Ramaswamy whose desire for attention makes Donald Trump look like a wallflower.
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According to the New Republic report, "... in the crowded Republican presidential field where blowing up the government is a common core theme ... Vivek Ramaswamy is taking it to another level in his bid to get attention through shocking proposals."
Noting his desire to fire one million federal workers in his first year as president, the analysts wrote, "Ramaswamy wants a revolution that is Donald Trump’s 'Schedule F' executive order on steroids. Instead of pushing perhaps 50,000 career federal civil servants out of their jobs to be replaced by political appointments, as Trump attempted, Ramaswamy is going all the way, with a proposal to convert all 2.2 million feds into at-will workers who could be fired for any reason, including personal disloyalty. That outflanks Trump on the right."
"The Republicans are in an arms race to see who can seize the headlines by coming up with the most extreme assault on the federal government'" they wrote. "To be sure, these plans are unworkable and outside the bounds of legal and constitutional realities. And they have absolutely nothing to do with what it takes to deliver the things that people want and expect the federal government to do. But they are still deeply dangerous and destructive."
They concluded, "Attacking government has been a sure-fire Republican applause line since Reagan said, 'The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.' But further undermining the government’s ability to serve citizens will only further stoke their distrust in government, making it that much more difficult to govern," adding, "... a lot of Americans would lose when key and popular government services that protect public safety, public health, national security, along with economic prosperity and wellbeing, collapse or are damaged and diluted."
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