Why the Youth are Leaving Obama

With just five months to go until the general election the race for the Presidency is heating up. With President Obama officially kicking off his re-election campaign yesterday at Ohio State the boxing gloves are off and now the real mudslinging can begin. The event was lackluster at best as only 13,000 people showed up when event organizers were expecting 20,000 people, many of whom were college students. This is a sign of the up-hill battle the Obama re-election campaign faces as they try to reconnect with youth voters that they have lost over the course of the last three years. While some Democrats will cite excuses for the lack of attendance, to Republicans this proves that college students are finally getting the picture that the Democratic mindset of big government policies are not the way to produce a sustainable future.

Many young people supported Obama in 2008 because of his bold plan to help invigorate the younger generation. But in his first term in office he has done anything but that. The president promised that he would make college affordable for the average U.S. citizen so that more young people could acquire a degree and then seek a higher paying job: what we got is tuition, on average, increasing by 25%. The president promised that he would make jobs more readily available, particularly in manufacturing: what we got is the unemployment rate among young Americans ballooning up to 16% and leaving half of new college graduates unemployed. The president promised to help more American children get out of poverty: instead poverty among children increased 23%, most likely because of Obama’s job-killing regulations and taxes, but we will talk about that later. These numbers don't lie and there is no excuse for them. This president has failed America, in particular the youth, and has no plan of action to try to contradict these embarrassing numbers.

But these numbers are just the aftermath of a full term marred with job killing policies. It starts with the economy, and the lack of respect the president display's towards the free-market system. Believing that our country is better with the government picking winners and losers, and not the private sector is ludicrous. Look no further than GM. Sure, the president may brag that Osama Bin Laden is dead and GM is alive but at what cost? Is it really necessary for the government to give Millions of dollars to GM to build the Volt, an electric car that is performing dreadfully in sales when compared to other competitor's compact, gas powered cars? Is it really worth spending taxpayer money on?

The answer is that the government is trying to spend its way out of a huge deficit and at the same time trying to manipulate the free-market system by picking winners and losers because they believe they know what is better for the American people than by letting them make their own decisions in the free market. However, this statement couldn't be anymore false. Look at the government’s track-record during the last three years. We have been downgraded by almost every credit rating company due to our unchecked spending. We have invested millions in alternative energy companies only to produce results like Solyndra which went bankrupt only a year after it received a government loan. Something isn't working, and that something is the mindset that is currently being displayed by our president. Spending is not the solution to our problems, and the cronies that believe a stimulus package is the way to navigate out of a recession have no right to serve the American people.

If this doesn't prove to the average person that the government needs to be out of our lives then I don't know what will. This is especially pertinent in this election as these candidates truly represent two distinct, and different paths that they want to lead our country down. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that the path on the right, which we have been taking for 200+ years, with a few exceptions, is a little more productive and self-sustaining than the path on the left, which we have been on for the last few years beginning with the Bush bailouts. This has led to increased national debt, a country on the brink of collapse, and a complete lack of respect for our country's founding principles. The decision is clear and simple for college-aged students: pick the candidate on the right and there is a chance that we can restore our country's prosperity. Pick the candidate on the left and we most certainly can kiss our country, as we know it goodbye.

This is why college students refuse to support Barack Obama and his re-election bid, because they know that if he spent a first term in office proposing unprecedented spending bills and reforms knowing he would have to run for re-election, then imagine what he will do when he doesn't have to worry about re-election.