The young-folk organization that nurtured such GOP talents as Lee Atwater and Karl Rove has weighed in on the Whither the Republican Party? debate, and their solution is (surprise!) “more sophisticated messaging” about how down is up and night is day. Reports Alex Pareene, at Salon, “The branch of the conservative movement that bred the party’s scummiest strategists urges a softer sell”:
[Monday], the College Republican National Committee is releasing a report, based on a poll and focus groups, examining how and why the Republican Party lost the under-30 vote and what they could do to win it back. Spoiler: They will have to become an entirely different party with entirely different positions. Though that is sort of my interpretation of their findings. The College Republicans are still pretty sure it’s primarily a problem of “messaging.”…
A major problem for the party, of course, is that young voters are drifting leftward on economic issues, which is really the conservative movement’s nightmare scenario. The College Republicans sort of acknowledge this, but they also insist that young people simply have got the wrong idea about the GOP’s economic message. For some crazy reason everyone has decided that all right-wing tax and economic policy is geared toward making already rich people richer!
“Policies that lower taxes and regulations on small businesses are quite popular. Yet our focus on taxation and business issues has left many young voters thinking they will only reap the benefits of Republican policies if they become wealthy or rise to the top of a big business,” the report says. “We’ve become the party that will pat you on your back when you make it but won’t offer you a hand to help you get there.”…
So young voters are apparently rejecting core right-wing economic beliefs. How should the party respond? The authors say “the party must explain how its policies translate into chances for economic advancement and should seek to do so in a more ‘caring’ tone.” A “caring” tone sounds like a good first step, but one slight issue is that young people have figured out that Republican policies don’t translate into chances for economic advancement…
It is a bit interesting that these calls for change in how the party presents itself are coming from the College Republicans, traditionally one of the party’s most proudly assholish wings… The culture that so desperately needs to be changed in the GOP begins with its college boosters, a lily-white crowd of entitled bow-tied pricks who go out of their way to be detested by “nerds and fags” on every campus on which they have a chapter…
Paul Constant, at the Stranger, adds:
… When I went to the political conventions, this report’s points were clearly illustrated. The number of young white preps I saw at the RNC could barely fill out a rowing team. They were trotted out for the cameras, along with the few minorities in attendance, but they didn’t seem to have any real power in the proceedings. Young people were everywhere at the DNC. They were given real responsibilities, and they had a voice in and around the convention. Unless there’s a sea change—probably inspired by a messianic young presidential candidate—this Republican youth problem isn’t going to get better anytime soon.
Perhaps Donald Trump– who, according to long-ago-youthful-GOP-vanity-messaging-project National Review, is still a sought-after GOP solon — can pitch his next reality show: Who Wants to Be the Next GOP Celebrity Messiah Apprentice?
It is possibly not coincidental that NYMag chose today to publish an illustrated post on the current sociopolitical rise and origins of the term “derp“ (minor spoiler: South Park, by way of 4chan). Cometh the hour, cometh the vocabulary.
Open Thread: College Republicans Call for Better LiarsPost + Comments (66)