Obama Bars College Republicans from Speech, Labels Them Security Threat

Whenever he talks about the economy, Obama sounds like he’s trying to explain to a professor why his term paper is late.

Yesterday’s speeches in Galesburg, Ill., and Warrensburg, Mo., marked the President’s 382nd pivot to the economy. He gave another today in Jacksonville. Don’t worry if you missed the droning affairs, because you’ve heard them 381 times before. An hour-plus fusillade of shouldas, wouldas and couldas if it weren’t for those meddling Republicans.

But what is more concerning than the speeches’ gaseous impotence was the president’s troubling security priorities.

Warrensburg is home to the University of Central Missouri and several students were excited to attend. One group of ten bought tickets together and some even traveled a long way for a chance to see the president. But security personnel turned them away at the door, claiming they were a threat.

Were they carrying explosives? Or smuggling jars of poo like liberals protesting the Texas legislature? Did they belong to the UCM chapter of Youth for Al Qaeda? No, no, and I highly doubt it. Obama deemed these kids a security threat because they were… wait for it… College Republicans.

Forget global terrorists — conservatives are the real enemies of the state.

Some of the students wore Tea Party T-shirts advertising scary concepts like liberty, patriotism and the free market. Hours earlier, they attended a small, peaceful protest in a designated “free speech” area far from the speech venue. They even complied with the bizarre rule that they couldn’t be within eyesight or earshot of people waiting in line. All had put away their signs so they could respectfully listen to the President’s side of the story.

Courtney Scott, State Treasurer of the Missouri College Republicans, was upset at the ideological targeting. “It just didn’t make any sense,” she said. “A lot of us traveled several hours to watch the speech. We were very disappointed not to be able to attend.”

The President wasn’t worried about these young conservatives endangering his physical security, but rather highlighting his ideological insecurity. Just imagine if these 10 independent thinkers told a few audience members about Missouri’s 16 percent unemployment rate among college students, the failure of government-run college loans, or the $16.7 trillion in debt they owe.

We can’t have free speech interfere with Obama’s umpteenth excuse for not fixing the economy in the past five years. 

Despite this egregious violation of their rights, Courtney Scott and her friends will have plenty of opportunities to see this speech again. We can be assured that President Obama will say the same things in 2014, 2015 and 2016.

Follow Jon on Twitter at @ExJon.