(LifeSiteNews) — Businessman, former Republican presidential candidate, and MAGA personality Vivek Ramaswamy favorably touted the Republican Party’s new centrist stances on life and marriage in a social media exchange with U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), lending his voice to the party’s transformation on some of its most deeply-held social values.
On Tuesday, “AOC” responded to a clip of Ramaswamy’s speech to the Republican National Convention, in which he told Generation Z voters that identifying as conservative on leftist college campuses was the true path to being a “rebel.”
“Young people don’t take well to bigoted leaders who attack LGBTQ+ rights, outlaw abortion, cozy up to gun manufacturers + oil execs, and support a rapist for President,” she said.
Ramaswamy responded with a “reality check” that “the GOP platform does NOT oppose gay marriage & does NOT support a federal abortion ban. Stop misleading your followers & admit the real reason you’re freaking out is that we’re picking off your voters.”
Here’s a reality check, @AOC: the GOP platform does NOT oppose gay marriage & does NOT support a federal abortion ban. Stop misleading your followers & admit the real reason you’re freaking out is that we’re picking off your voters. Have a real debate on the merits, instead of… https://t.co/K1uinEeI4M
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) July 17, 2024
READ: GOP surrenders to some of the greatest evils known to man at its convention
As previously covered by LifeSiteNews, the 2024 convention has adopted a dramatically-shortened national party platform drafted and promoted by surrogates of former President and 2024 White House nominee Donald Trump. It cuts the GOP’s longstanding support for a “human life amendment to the Constitution and legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to children before birth,” in favor of leaving abortion policy to individual states. The platform also endorses birth control (many common methods of which function as abortifacients) and embryo-destructive in vitro fertilization.
The platform also cut its predecessor’s declaration that “[t]raditional marriage and family, based on marriage between one man and one woman, is the foundation for a free society,” and call for that understanding to be reflected in law, including with the “reversal” of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell ruling that forces all 50 states to recognize homosexual “marriage.”
Presidential son Eric Trump, husband of RNC co-chair Lara Trump, has said that the changes are “reflective of my father and what he believes in,” and “my wife Lara who runs the RNC and what she believes in.”
“If you look at it, it has Donald Trump written all over it,” Lara Trump boasted when the full text was first released. “This is his platform.”
For the past year, Trump has worked to stake out a middle ground on abortion, closing the door on further federal action while expressing indifference to what policies states ultimately adopt. Ramaswamy’s embrace of that direction contrasts somewhat from his own presidential run, where he declared to LifeSiteNews he was “unapologetically pro-life.” During that interview he declined to commit to a federal abortion ban, but claimed he was “keeping an open mind on” the constitutional authority to enact one.
In December of that year, he said the “winning path for the GOP on abortion isn’t to compromise on our principles, it’s to practice what we preach” by making men legally responsible for the babies they conceive, because “it’s about human rights.”
Pro-life anguish over the platform changes was largely sidelined by Saturday’s shooting at a Pennsylvania Trump rally that grazed the candidate’s ear, killed one attendee, and critically wounded two others, intensifying pro-Trump sentiment among Republicans.
National polling aggregations by RealClearPolitics and RaceToTheWH indicate a widening popular vote lead for Trump since the debate, with the former president’s leads in swing states translating to a seemingly durable Electoral College advantage over incumbent Democrat President Joe Biden, who is currently the subject of widespread speculation as to whether he will drop out of the race.