Monica Crowley ’90 addressed a packed Love Auditorium crowd of students and their families on Friday, October 26. Crowley is cur-rently a contributor to the FOX News Channel and hosts her own radio show, “The Monica Crow-ley Show.” She recently published a book “What the (Bleep) Just Happened?: The Happy War-rior’s Guide to the Great Ameri-can Comeback” about the current state of American politics and, as the title suggests, she had less than complimentary things to say about the Obama administration.

Standing to the side of a panel of representatives from the College Democrats and College Republi-cans, Crowley told the audience about her flat tire dilemma earlier in the day that almost prevented her from making it to campus. She arrived just in time and quickly let the audience know that soon, “the United States of America will be under new management.”

According to her roughly 40 minute speech, the last four years have been based on radical wealth distribution, “reckless” foreign policy and increasing costs for gas and insurance.

“Thanks Obamacare. I thought you were supposed to lower costs,” Crowley said. Crow-ley also voiced her opinions on healthcare.

“If the government controls your healthcare, the government controls you.” As her speech progressed, Crowley became even more critical of the Obama administration, say-ing that Obama has a “network of czars” so that the catastrophe he is causing can’t be stopped. Since “all three branches of government are in the crapper” it’s a good thing that America has a “fourth branch of government: the people.”

After Crowley’s speech, College Dem-ocrats juniors Ben Krempley and Andy Philipson were given five minutes each to respond. Crowley claimed that current polls show Romney ahead of Obama, but Philipson cited a poll by Nate Silver, the New York Times statistician who pre-dicted the 2008 election outcome nearly perfectly, in 49 states, that puts Obama in the lead. Philipson called Romney the “etch-a-sketch” President due to his tendency to change his views, especially about taxing the wealthy. Krempley took the opportunity to focus on Crowley’s statement that America is no longer feared in the world. He stated that a na-tion doesn’t lead through fear; it leads through respect and cooperation.

The two College Republicans, seniors Kyle Gavin and Matt Eichel, were each giv-en a chance to speak. Gavin focused almost exclusively on the media, claiming that Obama is the “most unqualified president” and he simply gave a good, well publicized speech in 2004. Gavin believes the media tries to claim that Romney is unqualified by over analyzing his Big Bird comment and other subtle statements, but enough of the country knows that Romney is the more qualified candidate.

“Obama’s presidency has been a complete and utter failure,” Eichel said.

Crowley was given time to respond to the students and, despite some nervous laughter from the audience, was respectful towards the Democrats. She briefly talked about how Democrats complain about taxing the one percent, yet, according to Crowley, if 100 percent of the earnings of the one percent were taxed, it would only fuel the federal government for two weeks.

“When the U.S. is not feared, the wheels come off the world,” Crowley said in response.

Crowley also weighed in on the Elec-toral College and her predictions come Election Day,

“Ohio will be the Florida of 2012 and ul-timately be won by Romney,” Crowley said.

After Crowley’s lecture, all members of the audience were invited to the Africana Latin Asian Native American (ALANA) Cultural Center for dinner with Crowley, the student panel and a few professors where the political discussion continued on the upcoming presidential election.

Contact Jared Goldsmith at [email protected].