The responsibility of the US president is to keep its citizens safe and free. President Barack Obama is doing neither. No one recognizes more how badly our president has failed on these two basic measures than citizens of Eastern Europe. Many of them came/fled/weaseled their way to the US to escape the absence of freedom and safety in their home countries up until the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. In recent years, many young people have come to the US from Eastern Europe, armed with impeccable English (plus fluency in 3-4 other languages) and college degrees, and are outpacing their American counterparts in business schools throughout the US. Ask any of them who they would vote for as president of the US today and they would likely answer, “Any republican”, or “anyone other than Barack Obama”.
The reason is simple: Eastern Europeans know tyranny, and in the US, they recognize the signs of creeping socialism and, in their minds (and mine), the inevitable and revanchist end result of government excess and its consequence, communism and tyranny. They are incredulous at what we are doing to ourselves. They know that socialism (and worse) in the US may lead to the end of their own new-born freedom and safety.
After posting a recent blog decrying the failed Obama presidency, within hours I received messages from former students from Estonia to Romania saying how much they agreed with me; and these were students who have never studied or lived in the United States.
Conservatives amongst the coming generations in Eastern Europe may represent a majority, especially among young, college-educated professionals or business persons. Already the “republican party of Europe”, called the European People’s Party (EPP), is represented in the offices of 17 heads of state out of 27 countries in the European Union. Importantly, much of the conservative political campaign energy in Eastern Europe is derived from the firepower of educated, dedicated, patriotic, hard-working, ambitious young people.
Inside the US, it is almost not possible to find a recent emigre from Eastern Europe who voted for Obama, or who would vote for him in 2012. While these intelligent people hardly represent enough votes to make a difference in the US, what is it that they know that our own indigenous, home-grown smart people don’t know?
The answer is they remember, if not directly, then indirectly through their parents and, especially, their grandparents, what tyranny was like … and they prefer freedom and will work hard to protect it ... as hard as Americans worked for freedom during WWII. The stakes to them are more or less the same.
Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House of Representatives and now a candidate for the US presidency in 2012 recently lost most of his campaign staff; Newt, have you thought of retaining some of Eastern Europe’s conservative campaign talent?
