Pennsylvania Leadership Conference Hosts Vivek Ramaswamy’s Stirring Address to Conservatives

CAMP HILL—On Friday night in Pennsylvania, Vivek Ramaswamy gave the campaign speech he had always wanted to give. He didn’t give it to himself.

Instead, the former Republican presidential candidate for 2024 gave a passionate speech in support of former president and likely Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump at the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference, which is a big event for Pennsylvania’s grassroots conservatives every year.

He brought up themes that were important to his campaign, which was successful enough to keep the 38-year-old businessman on the shrinking GOP debate stages for most of 2023 but died out after the Iowa caucuses in January. Ramaswamy told his audience that they needed to fight for Trump this year like the survival of America depends on it.

In his mind, America is a place where illegal immigrants are told they are not welcome, transgender people’s rights are seriously questioned, and everyone knows that fossil fuels are necessary for people to be happy.

When Ramaswamy made these statements, he was following one of his main beliefs: that the health of a democracy can be seen by how easy it is for people to “say what they believe.”

The Indian-American investor may now be seen as a kind of civic doctor since his views are pretty clear.

Ramaswamy said Friday night that Americans are in the middle of an existential political cold war in 2024. It is between people who love America and its founding ideas and “a fringe minority who hate this country and what it stands for.”

“You can only win a war if you know you’re in one,” Ramaswamy said. “Two hundred years ago, our founding fathers knew that.”

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Trump and his supporters used false claims of vote fraud to support their unusual effort to stay in power even though they lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden. Ramaswamy’s speech did not repeat these false claims.

Trump is being charged with two different types of crimes for the things he did, even though he is running for president as the Republican candidate.

If conservative voters want to fully join this year’s battle, Ramaswamy said they’ll have to persuade their peers that the stakes are high enough. This could mean filling poll-watching posts, voting early, voting by mail, or any other legal way to get as many votes as possible.

Ramaswamy said, “I call it a war because there is no middle ground.” “You either believe in merit or following rules set by a group.” Either you support control or you support free speech. Either you believe that the United States is unique or we should be sorry for who we are.

The teacher told him, “You can’t have both of these things at the same time.”

He used an inspiring line from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream Speech” to support meritocracy instead of equal chance. He said he wanted to live in a country where “you get ahead in this country not on the color of your skin but on the content of your character and your contributions.”

Ramaswamy said, “That’s why we’re against affirmative action, the DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) agenda, racial equity audits, and quota systems in this country.”

By the rule of law, I mean that the people we vote for to run the government should be the ones who run it. There isn’t a secret government of the deep state running things right now.

He said that Trump is the leader of the country who can fight for those ideals, but he will need strong soldiers on the ground to help him win.

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Ramaswamy said that for conservatives to be successful, they need to be ready to dedicate themselves to the cause, just like Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin did during their existential struggle in 1776.

“The question for this country right now is whether we believe those ideals are still around.” “Like, do we think this is our 1776 moment?”

Ramaswamy, sometimes in opposition to Trump, has a positive view of the “Make America Great Again” movement. He does this by talking about how he was raised by Indian immigrants and went on to start companies that are worth billions of dollars.

People who follow Ramaswamy’s campaign have said that even though his parents were immigrants, they had some big benefits. His father was an engineer at General Electric and his mother was a therapist who worked with older people.

Still, Ramaswamy’s career did go on to even greater heights. And it makes him want the American Dream even more.

“I still think we can be a nation on the rise right now,” he said on Friday. “I’m not going to say that the American Dream is still alive and well.” There’s something I should say, but I can’t. It’s still alive and only needs life support.

But I promise that if we all do our part, we don’t have to be a country that is falling apart. Our best days are still ahead of us.

He said he would be proud to work in a new Trump administration in a short interview after his speech. But he quickly added that his only job right now is to help make sure that the new Trump administration has strong Republican majorities in Congress.

He was even less open about his plans for the future in politics.

In this next part of my life, my goal is to do everything I can to save this country in the way I talked about tonight. There are likely a lot of different ways to do that, but I’ll do whatever has the biggest effect.

Friday, he asked Republicans in Pennsylvania to join him in that fight.

“This country has been filled with fear.” It has spread like a virus… “But courage can also spread,” Ramaswamy said. “We just need more people to stand up and show it, like the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776.”