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First some background: the Student Advocacy Corps (SAC) is part of the UNC Association of Student Governments. The UNC system has 16 campuses, and the SAC is made up of two students from each campus. Our purpose is to lobby the NC General Assembly and others on behalf of students of the UNC system. We met as a group yesterday and today for a training session and to work on our direction for 2009.
As you might guess, college kids who sign up for a volunteer lobbying job are fairly politically active, so a lot of the chit-chat was around both state and national politics. What surprised me was the degree to which the very openly conservative people in the room avoided associating themselves with the republican party. For some parts of the state that makes total sense, since democrats control their districts, but for others it didn’t. What occurred to me about the third time I heard an awkward I’m-conservative-but-not-republican comment was that "republican" is a soiled term. The brand is tarnished, and these young, politically active and motivated conservatives don’t want to touch it.
This raises several questions for me. Will they pick it back up and try to polish it off? Will they wait for someone to rally around and pretend the 2008 cycle didn’t happen? Or will Obama swallow up all their enthusiasm, as he had clearly done for the one overt Obamacon in the room? How are young republicans behaving in other states?
I’d like to think that the dynamic I saw this weekend means the republican brand is so tarnished that it is unrecoverable, especially since people have such an amazing capacity to forget details like, say, why we were supposedly invading Iraq. Branding is a powerful thing, and if the name "republican" becomes poison in a state like NC, then it could have very lasting consequences. The reality, though, is that it won’t happen magically after Bush is gone. He is currently the poison, and once he is gone in January there will likely be an internal struggle to purge and polish the brand.
We have a window, though, and a perfect opportunity. Republicans are defining themselves right now as the party against blue collar workers. Republican party: the party that wants to force wage cuts on 5+ million workers who are the backbone of our manufacturing sector. Republican party: let’s kill our American auto brands. Republican party: we’re neo-Hooverites.
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Would be interesting to hear specifically how these youngsters define conservative.
Excellent post, thanks.
Jane has already done a lot with her “strange bedfellows,” stuff.
You might want to tell the students that afaik, Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, and other white supremacists needed a label to segregate themselves away from pro-integration Democrats in the 1960’s. Helms, Thurmond, and others realized that George Wallace’s third party doomed their political aspirations, as well as needlessly isolating the old confederacy. “Conservative,” was code for a pro-segregation Democrats.
funny because not only is the term “republican” soiled but the term “concervative” is not only soiled, it hasn’t meant “concervaive” since reagan took over in his radical definition of what is and is not “concervative
Would be interesting to hear specifically how these youngsters define conservative
They seemed split in their emphasis. Half thought it meant primarily fiscal conservatism and the other half put their emphasis on defense.
Great observation! The GOP is in trouble and they are doing nothing to fix it.
Any polling on this? Has the number of College Republicans gone down?
That would be the next step if the trend holds. Please follow up on this topic.
There has been a disaffection from the GOP by people who had considered themselves “conservative” for a while, I suppose. My sister has described herself as “a conservative woman” for years, and a couple of years ago declared that she “HATES the GOP, they will lie, cheat, steal, ANYthing to win an election!” She was happy to see the election cycle just end and raised a glass to that at thanksgiving.
So do they mean by “fiscal conservative” a Social Darwinism sort of approach to economics. This would suggest that the Keynesian approach to the economy is something that fails to connect with them, despite historical evidence that deficit spending in recessions and depressions is, in fact, beneficial. So are they ideological…”let them die if they can’t compete” types. If so, the Republican mantra may be precisely what these want to hear. Wonder what they think about the US automakers being drowned by the Republicans? Iconic cars like the Corvette, Mustang, Trans Am, Cadillac, all to be artifacts of history.
The others seem afraid…or just xenophobic. I suspect military defense are code words for “tighten up immigration” (no Arabs, Mexicans, Africans or Chinese) and a sports-analogy approach to diplomacy (”We’ll kick your butt! Show us RESPECT!”).
Surprised that Christian “issues” conservatism is no longer a big thing?