Written by Gina Cielo
Conservative talk-show host Laura Ingraham urged an audience of nearly 2,000 to stand up against President Obama in a speech at Harding University’s Benson Auditorium Tuesday night.
Ingraham, who spoke at Harding as part of theAmerican Studies Distinguished Lecture Series, has had experience as a speechwriter during the final two years of the Reagan Administration and served as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. She is a regularFox News contributorand has her own radio station, where she discusses political issues.
Her speech highlighted the negative effects she believes the Obama administration and Democrats have had on the world in the past year.
Ingraham said that last year Democrats wanted change in energy consumption, impoved health care, more taxes on businesses, more compromise with adversaries, and greater access to abortion. Now, one year later, the Democrats realize they misinterpreted, she said.
Ingraham said she believes it is in the people’s hands to change the way the government is run, and that little towns and big cities have already risen up against the government’s takeover of healthcare.
“People who have never been involved in politics before have suddenly became activists in freedom,” Ingraham said.
To emphasize her point, she referred to a CNN poll that states that 52 percent of Americans say Obama does not deserve a second term. An overwhelming applause followed, evidence that Ingraham’s audience agreed with her political views.
Ingraham concluded her speech citing four traps she believes conservatives need to avoid. The first of these is not falling into the bipartisan trap snare, she said.
“There is no reason the republicans need to get sunk down to this phony game of bipartisanship,” Ingraham said. “It’s ridiculous.”
The second trap is in-fighting, Ingraham said. She told the audience that now is not the time to pick up your marbles, start pouting and threaten to go home.
“Now is the time to rally and not savage each other,” she said.
Vagueness, Ingraham said, is yet another trap to avoid. Generalities may sound good in a speech, she argued, but if a candidate wins in November, he better have something to run on.
Finally, conservatives must avoid apathy, she said. Ingraham told the audience that government is about them, not political parties.
“You are either going to make your voice heard in November, or you’re going to sit back and let Washington dictate more of your lives,” she said.
Ingraham pleaded with the college students in the audience to make a difference in the country, saying that when they are 35 years old, paying a mortgage, raising children, and maintaining a job, they are not going to have time to worry about the well-being of the nation.
“Our country is either going to be stronger in the next 15 or 20 years, or America will be no more,” Ingraham said.
