Republicans Will Fight the Next Cycle
That was the buzz in Northeastern Pennsylvania during the first week of November last year. It was high noon in what would become the most contentious election of our lifetime. Yet, a group of relentless students screaming themselves hoarse in the town square, daring the disapproval of former President Clinton by showing up uninvited to his rally, and storming the streets armed with literature, captivated the locals. Newspapers and television crews seemed to follow our every move, asking with a detectable degree of incredulity: why did a group of young students come all the way from D.C. to help Congressional candidate Lou Barletta?Except, what they really wanted to know was why. Why in the revolution of 2008, are all of you teenagers and twenty-somethings voting Republican?See, despite what you might hear about the Democrats being the party of now, we in College Republicans see it for what it is: a fad, and a persuasive one at that. After all, nearly two-thirds of our generation voted for President Obama.But we think, with all due respect to our liberal friends, that they were duped. His face was on t-shirts at Urban Outfitters, he had an application for your iPhone, and the DNC looked more like MTV with all of those Obama-crazed stars slinking around the place. Obama was cool, but has he earned our generation’s vote?While we knew all along that Obama’s message of change, diversity and justice is better promulgated through conservative principles, like competition and self-determination, we also get the trend. We watched with both awe and horror as Obama captivated our peers with his innovation and eloquence.To give you some perspective here, Republicans view President Obama and his policies roughly the same way guys look at UGG boots: attractive in the short-run, but ultimately too costly and impractical to sustain. Admittedly, our Party failed. It neither communicated our message in a modern way nor nominated a candidate to represent those ideals. For this, we are sorry, but before you pick up an Obama pin for your backpack, we ask that you join us, one of the most active College Republicans chapters in the nation, and help us to build a new face for the Party of Lincoln.Think you can’t make a difference? Consider this: CRs campaign for dozens of high-profile and local Republican candidates every year, rank nationally in terms of membership, knock on thousands of doors, and send our members to intern at some of the most prestigious institutions in the world.Lou Barletta was ultimately a victim of the Republican massacre of 2008, narrowly losing to the undeserving Representative Paul Kanjorski, but when CRs came to town in the final days of the campaign, where we were outspent and outmanned, Barletta won the county where we campaigned, something which a Republican candidate hadn’t done in decades. Coincidence? I think not. Terry McAuliffe and Governor Jon Corzine better prepare early, because CRs are ready to go to the mattresses this fall.
