Well, the first GOP presidential debate of the 2024 campaign season is officially in the books, and as I write this, the post-debate spin room in Milwaukee is, well, spinning.

Opinions will vary on this, of course, but one of the main things I look for in a candidate for public office is authenticity. Do they come across as genuine, as someone who really cares about America? Are they someone who passionately wants to advance conservative ideals in order to put the country we all love back on the right track?

Further, I want to believe that the candidate is in the race for the right reasons - the betterment of their country and its people, and not themselves.

When I watched the debate, one person who I wanted to get a closer look at was Vivek Ramaswamy - not because I think he's an interesting guy but to see whether he came off differently among his competitors on the debate stage than he does in interviews and social media videos, where he gets to throw what I feel are unsubstantiated broadsides at the rest of the field (except for Donald Trump) and make lofty claims that rarely get challenged.

My opinion after watching the debate, at least from a style perspective, is that Ramaswamy is what many of his critics on the right say of him, an insincere opportunist who is in the race for the same reason many believe Nikki Haley is: to elevate his national profile and to win the favor of Donald Trump by trying to knock out his chief competitor in order to get vice presidential nominee consideration.

I mean, when pressed on his statements and jabs at the other candidates (Trump is the only one he effusively praised), Ramaswamy at times bumbled after finally being called out by the people he has said in so many words are "sellouts" who have helped ruin the country.

This heated exchange between Ramaswamy and Chris Christie, in my opinion, is one example of this:

Ramaswamy, who has been accused of being a fraud candidate, claims everyone on the stage is corrupt and gets into it with Chris Christie.
Christie compares him to Obama: "We are dealing with the same type of amateur." pic.twitter.com/6Tezp3n7gJ

— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) August 24, 2023

Another was Haley blasting Ramaswamy over his seeming naivety about how the world works. It was at that point that the tide seemed to turn against him:

NIKKI HALEY: "You have no foreign policy experience and it SHOWS!"

Cheers drown out the beginning of Vivek Ramaswamy's response. pic.twitter.com/WFnHpS6aTC

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) August 24, 2023

Ramaswamy also had some lively exchanges with Mike Pence, who like Christie seemed to make it his mission to expose Ramaswamy as an "amateur" who did not belong on the stage and who, in essence, was a "fraud," as others have suggested:

Vivek = fraud. pic.twitter.com/OWPUAfDnzC

— RBe (@RBPundit) August 22, 2023

In a nutshell, though some will paint this as a "the establishment attacks the underdog" thing, the reality of it is that in my opinion, Ramaswamy got clobbered by that same establishment not because they necessarily view him as a threat but perhaps because they, too, see right through him.

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