An Election Disaster

By Oliver DeMille

There are six weeks to go before the 2012 election, and currently President Obama is way ahead.

If the election were held today, according to the average of polls, not only would President Obama be re-elected but he would sweep the election.

This election will come down to the top swing states, as I’ve stated in the past, and right now President Obama leads in all eight of the biggest swing states.

He’s eight for eight.

He’s also ahead by 7%, 5% and 5% in the top three swing states, Florida, Ohio and Virginia, respectively.

In presidential politics, 3% is a landslide and 5% is a huge mandate for change.

The reason for this increasing lead by President Obama is simple.

Latino voters believe the Republican party in general, and Governor Romney specifically, is not on their side—not in favor of more open immigration and, in contrast, likely to take a harder line against immigrants.

The short-term concern for Republicans is that Romney has a lot of ground to make up and not much time to do so.

The bigger worry for Republicans but also for independents is that this will lead to House and Senate elections that give a lot more seats to Democrats and bring increased taxes, a bigger national debt, larger deficits, and more runaway spending and regulating in the next four years.

The long-term problem for Republicans is that as a Party they are seen as anti-Latino.

The sad thing about this is that most Republicans who are anti-immigrant and anti-Latino are just plain wrong—like the South was wrong about slavery before the Civil War.

Freedom should be extended to everyone, regardless of race, religion, gender or country of birth.

If you don’t believe this, you don’t really believe in freedom.

America used to be the beacon of freedom to the world, and the Statue of Liberty invited all immigrants to come to America and get freedom.

Two things killed America’s role as the light of freedom to the whole world: 1) we became a welfare state, and 2) we stopped being an open society that passionately encouraged immigrants to come here.

To solve our current direction away from freedom and into decline, we need to adopt two grand strategies: (1) stop giving welfare to anyone and basing a government on the welfare ideal, and (2) drastically open immigration to any honest, hard-working people around the world who are seeking freedom.

We should implement the first change wisely and in stages in order to do it right, but the second one can be enacted almost immediately.

In short, we need a rebirth of free enterprise and the widespread freedom and prosperity it always brings.

America needs to stand for freedom again, not build walls to keep people out.

And as for the future of the welfare state, unless Republicans change their position to wildly pro-immigration, the Democrats are going to keep winning and expanding a welfare society.

The three upcoming presidential debates may be interesting theater, but unless Republicans get serious about being the freedom party there isn’t much chance they’ll win the White House on November 6.

Something could change in the weeks ahead, but unless it does the Republican leadership is going to have to take a good hard look at itself if it wants any success in 2014 or 2016.

Anti-Latino parties aren’t going to win much in the United States today.

In all of this, independents are rightly frustrated because one party stands for more welfare, and the other stands for building fences that keep freedom limited to those who already have it.

That makes neither party the party of freedom, and neither the party of progress.

The only solution is to put as many anti-welfare and pro-immigrant candidates as possible into the Senate and House, as well as into state and local governments.

And in the long-term, it’s time to get over the desire to withhold freedom and opportunity from immigrants.

It’s time for America to once again stand for freedom for everyone—immigrants and everyone else—and to do so boldly and without apology.

We either stand for freedom, or we don’t.

And freedom means freedom for everyone, or it really isn’t freedom.

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Oliver DeMille is the chairman of the Center for Social Leadership and co-creator of Thomas Jefferson Education.

He is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.

Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.