Voter Voices: Stovall Witte III

Welcome to another installment of FITSNews’ “Voter Voices,” part of our website’s ongoing effort to gauge the sentiment of our readers on various issues and candidates as the 2016 “First in the South” presidential primary election begins to heat up.  

Want to participate in this forum yourself?  It’s easy.  Just fill out answers to the questions in bold (below) and email them to us (subject: “Voter Voices”) along with a headshot.

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VOTER VOICES: STOVALL WITTE III

Name: Stovall Witte III
Occupation: Graduate Student
Hometown: Hanahan, S.C.

I am … a former Captain in the U.S. Army, an Afghanistan veteran, and now an International MBA student at The University of South Carolina.

My top issue is … Immigration.  We have roughly 94 million American citizens not working in a stable job today.  Out of basic American kindness, as well as personal economic self-interest, we unfortunately face excessive legal and illegal immigration that has led to stagnant wages and higher levels of unemployment and underemployment.  In addition to falling wages and higher unemployment brought on by this oversupply of cheap labor, our modern immigration policy has led to massive increases in government welfare programs at all levels, leaving less for those who need a helping hand most and have been American citizens their whole lives.  We fail the poorest of our American brothers and sisters who wish to live decent working lives by having open borders.  This doesn’t just apply to low wage jobs either.  The regular growth of HB-1 Visas has removed incentives for American companies to train Americans to do more complicated jobs opting for immigrants who do not need the training and are willing to work for less.  There is a better way.  We have to commit ourselves to reducing legal immigration, work visas, and make sure those people we do issue visas to return to their country of origin to make a fair economic playing field for all Americans.

Also, illegal immigration and our loose immigration policies pose a serious threat to national security as we have seen time and time again.  Many do not realize this issue is not just about building a wall.  The vast majority of illegal immigrants in this country arrived legally through our visa program and decided not to return. This is not controlled diversity and brings none of diversity’s advantages.  For the safety and economic security of our people we must address immigration in this country.

Another issue that matters to me is … everything else.  National Security, including ISIS, Cyber Attacks, and strength of the Armed Forces are very important.  The National Debt is skyrocketing with wasteful government spending and no significant entitlement reforms since the last welfare bill passed in 1996.   A budget that requires a 39% corporate tax-rate, and other taxes to pay for a “free” health care system, ever expanding entitlements, and wasteful pork spending.  I am concerned about a society whose morals are in sharp decline, preoccupied with political correctness, and cares more about ‘not judging people’ than the human trafficking of sex slaves (an often unnoticed problem in modern day America). Politicians too scared to support social science proving the benefits of the family unit for children.  I could go on, but I will simply say that there is only one candidate running for president that I agree with on all those issues listed.

My 2016 choice is … Rick Santorum.  Santorum will certainly surprise the establishment media and political elite, as he has time and time again, if voters end up considering these three things.

1.  No one else in this race has the trifecta of experience, conservative credentials, and actual legislative and electoral victories over the democrats other than Rick Santorum.  And even if they have one or two of those things it is usually not to the degree that would match Rick’s resume.  Rick authored the landmark Welfare Reform Act and led his fellow Republicans in the successful fight to force Bill Clinton to sign welfare reform in 1996.  Rick also authored and led the fight to that made partial-birth abortion illegal in our country.  He’s the only Republican candidate who has experience making Hillary look like a fool in debates.  He is a strong Conservative Republican who has won congressional and multiple state-wide elections in an overwhelmingly blue district and state.  At every turn of his legislative career he was fighting for balanced budgets, entitlement reform, and calling out wasteful spending.  Santorum is also an expert on foreign policy.  He pushed for sanctions on Iran long before it was popular.  He is the only presidential candidate ISIS has called-out by name because Rick has a stronger grasp on what’s going on in the Middle East than anyone else on those debate stages.  He also created the idea of health savings accounts to keep government out of healthcare.  The list goes on.
2.  Rick is also the only candidate to my knowledge who has advocated for not only stopping illegal immigration, but also severely reducing work visa immigration.  That even puts him to the right of Trump (with his “big door” in the wall) and Cruz on the most important issue of this election.
3.  90 percent of Americans don’t own their own business or run a company.  74% of Americans age 25 to 65 don’t have a college degree.  But they can all vote.  Rick Santorum is the only Republican who has advocated a plan to reach out to those voters.

In the 2012 primary, I voted for … Rick Santorum.  He was the right guy for the job then too.  It was unfortunate that South Carolina didn’t vote for the conservative winner of the Iowa caucus.  Newt Gingrich is a great Republican, but Rick Santorum could have beaten Mitt Romney with the early push of a supportive South Carolina.  Rick Santorum went on to 2nd place with 11 states and over 4 million Republican primary votes nationally.  In his book ‘Blue Collar Conservatives’, Rick Santorum spends the first chapter detailing his frustrations of the party nominating a man who had implemented the trial run of what would be Obamacare and who overvalued business owners thereby devaluing the party’s outreach to working Americans.  The end effect of which was horrific exit-polls with voter after voter implying that ‘Mitt Romney doesn’t care about people like me’.

I believe America’s future is … going to go in one of two directions.  Either we assemble into a strong national identity or we continue to allow ourselves to fall more and more into complex factions.

The next president needs to … be a conservative, experienced negotiator and a proven fighter.  The hard truth is that Washington DC isn’t going to change overnight.  It will require constant Republican victories to change the culture there.  We republicans also have our work cut out for us in the things we need to do to effect the greater American culture in media and the arts.  That is one of the reasons I feel many of the writers at websites like FitsNews are doing important work.  In the meantime, we should help elect a person capable of changing the unprincipled, culture of corruption in DC.  Only one person in this race has actually done that before, Rick Santorum.  A zealous current freshman senator or an outsider with no legislative history will not be as effective, no matter how much bravado or plans of world domination they have.  That being said, they are all a thousand times more preferable than what the democrats are offering.

Once again, if you’d like to participate in “Voter Voices,” just email us your answers to the questions above (along with a headshot).  And if you don’t have a 2016 presidential favorite yet, that’s okay.  Just tell us who you like and/or don’t like – and why.

We look forward to publishing additional responses soon!

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