EVERYONE WHO SAID THAT REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES NEED TO ATTACK TRUMP WAS WRONG

Ed Kilgore tells us that Vivek Ramaswamy is having a moment:

Two large-sample national polls this week have shown Ramaswamy surging into third place in the GOP race (a Morning Consult tracking poll has him at 8 percent and a Reuters-Ipsos survey shows him at 9 percent). The RealClearPolitics polling averages place him fourth at 5 percent, but hot on the heels of third-place Pence. Just as importantly, Ramaswamy is making a favorable impression as he becomes better known among Republican voters, as this data from the latest survey of New Hampshire shows:

Favorable/Unfavorable (among likely GOP primary voters)

DeSantis 57/25%
Scott 56/10%
Ramaswamy 52/12%
Trump 49/26%
Haley 24/28%
Burgum 21/15%
Pence 18/50%
Christie 10/64%
Hurd 7/10%
Hutchinson 6/23%
Suarez 5/18%

— Steve Kornacki (@SteveKornacki) July 18, 2023

There's more: In a national survey from the PR firm Kaplan Strategies, Ramaswamy is tied with Ron DeSantis for second place, at 12%. (Donald Trump is at 48%.)

Okay, this isn't a surge that threatens the front-runner, but it's impressive given the fact that Ramaswamy was all but unknown before he announced his candidacy, as well as the fact that he's brown-skinned and a Hindu in a party that includes many voters who see America as a white Christian nation. And I assume many Republican voters are struggling to pronounce Ramaswamy. Anyone remember Loretta Lynn campaigning for George Bush in 1988?

At one stop, Miss Lynn said Mr. Dukakis was simply not her kind of politician. Thickening her Kentucky drawl, she added: "Why, I can't even pronounce his name!" The crowd roared with glee.

Even if he were white and Christian, it's unlikely that Ramaswamy would be beating Trump in the polls -- but he might be in second place. And after dozens of pundits have told Trump's rivals that they need to take the gloves off and attack Trump head-on, how is Ramaswamy succeeding? By embracing Trumpism and portraying himself as the logical next step. Here he was on the campaign trail in May:

“I respect what Donald Trump did, I do, with the America First agenda, but I think he went as far as he was going to go,” Mr. Ramaswamy told a crowd of about 100 on Tuesday night at Murphy’s Tap Room in Bedford, N.H. “I’m in this race to take the America First agenda far further than Donald Trump ever did.”

The notion that you can beat Donald Trump by attacking him has never made sense in a party that still regards Trump as a hero. The best you can do is say that you're going to take Trumpist ideas even further. That's what Ron DeSantis does, and that's why, for all his recent struggles, he's still solidly in second place. Meanwhile, how's it going for the candidates who are attacking Trump? Real Clear Politics says that Chris Christie is in seventh place, with 2.1% of the vote (3.8 points behind Ramaswamy), and Asa Hutchinson is tied for eighth, at 0.3.

Could Ramaswamy overtake DeSantis? It's possible. DeSantis is burdened by the fact that much of his message consists of reciting what he's already done in Florida. That roots his campaign in reality. Republican voters like the reality of DeSantis's Florida, but what they really want is a fantasy: domination of the libs and the "deep state" at an unprecedented scale. Ramaswamy's platform is pure revenge fantasy:

He supports abolishing the Department of Education, FBI, and IRS ... by executive order.... He has pledged to fire "at least half the federal workforce" ... and dismantle federal civil service protections.... He has called for an eight-year term for all government employees and pledged to revoke the executive order issued by President Kennedy that gave federal employees a right to collectively bargain.... He also has proposed repealing the federal law that requires presidents to spend all the money Congress appropriates....

Ramaswamy favors raising the voting age to 25.... Ramaswamy has said he would allow citizens between 18 and 24 to vote only if they are enlisted in the military, work as first responders, or pass a civics test....

Ramaswamy has ... called for the U.S. to "drill, frack, burn coal" ... He has criticized what he calls the "climate cult" and said that as president, he would "abandon the anticarbon framework as it exists" and halt "any mandate to measure carbon dioxide".

Trump and DeSantis have similarly autocratic plans, and if the three of them are the top three finishers in this race, that's why. So Trump is still the near-certain nominee, but if he succumbs to legal pressure and takes himself out of the contest -- which is unlikely, but possible -- DeSantis and Ramaswamy might be in a two-man race.