Vivek Ramaswamy is the clear frontrunner for the GOP nomination to be governor of Ohio. He's well-liked by MAGA conservatives, but he has an appeal that seems to go well beyond that.
And one of his opponents, likely desperate for attention, just crossed the line. Again.
Casey Putsch has made a name for himself by being as bombastic as possible, and by "bombastic as possible," I mean doing everything he can to lean into the leftist stereotype of everyone in the Republican Party being Nazis. Previously, he made waves by asking Grok to list the good things Adolf Hitler did, then criticized the AI chatbot when it said all of Hitler's actions were defined by the Holocaust, as well as trying to organize a "beer hall rally," much like you'd find in “Mein Kampf.”
And that's why he doesn't even show up in the polls as an individual.
Still, he thinks he's a serious candidate, and rather than just being pro-gun like a sensible Republican, he had to take it way too far:
Far-right Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Casey Putsch, a Tiffin native now based in Perrysburg, posted a video on X on Tuesday in which he fires a rifle while directing racist language at GOP primary frontrunner Vivek Ramaswamy.
In the video, which had drawn more than 66,000 views by Wednesday, Putsch appears holding a lever-action rifle, says “Hey Vivek, you want to play Cowboys versus Indians?” and fires three shots. He then adds, “Don’t worry, it’s feather, not dot” — a slur that uses derogatory shorthand to distinguish between Indigenous people and people of Indian descent. The “dot” reference refers to a bindi, a forehead mark worn by some Hindus, Jains and Buddhists.
Dr. Deepak Sarma, a professor of Indian religions and philosophy at Case Western Reserve University, told News 5 Cleveland’s Morgan Trau that the video constituted a clear threat.
“One hundred percent, it’s a threat,” Sarma said. “This person is perpetuating, is fueling xenophobia in the United States, and he’s doing it in the most egregious way possible.”
I mean, he's shooting a lever-action rifle, saying, "You want to play Cowboys versus Indians," when we all know how that game went as kids when we didn't have real guns in our hands, and then throws the "feather, not dot" thing to make it clear he's talking about the Native Americans that were shot regularly in old westerns.
Now, I don't have a problem with old westerns, nor the fact that they were often the antagonists. They were often the antagonists in real life, too. Don't buy the Left's "peaceful savage" narrative about them. They were complex, with some being peaceful and others being very warlike.
Still, the game was always about one group of kids trying to "kill" another group of kids. There's nothing wrong with that, but Putsch is literally saying that while holding and shooting a real gun.
Yeah, it sure looks like a threat.
More than that, though, it's stupid.
Using a gun as a prop in a GOP political ad is a longtime strategy to appear pro-gun. It's especially handy when you're talking about gun rights. Shooting them is fine, too.
This? Not so much.
Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me in the least for Putsch to actually be a Democrat who is LARPing as what he thinks Republicans are, just to confirm it for his fellow leftists. This is exactly the kind of thing they want out of the Right, and as we've seen with hate crime hoaxes, when there's an insufficient amount of hate, the Left will manufacture it themselves.
I just can't prove he's a leftist.
I can prove he's a vile moron, though. More accurately, he's proven it.
