CPAC: Concerned Plea for American Conservatism

I deviate shortly from the campaign trail to discuss my reactions to CPAC. Enjoy:



While I thoroughly enjoyed my trip to our nation’s capitol for the Conservative Political Action Conference over the weekend, I am finding that my in-flight, post-event reflection is being had with a much different attitude than I anticipated. I expected to be fired up, ignited by impassioned speakers of like minds, and inspired to take action for a massive Republican movement as soon as I stepped back on campus. I was going to feel an overwhelming sense of party unity, and have eliminated all fears I’d had for the future with a new knowledge of pending revolution. This weekend was supposed to have been a go-team, hell yeah, conservative pride rally where we looked forward with a collective focus and unfaltering determination. This weekend was supposed to be our Woodstock.

Instead, CPAC brought into view the flashing caution lights of a matter of grave concern. There is an ever-spreading rift within our party, and if we continue to fail to address it, we will collapse.

Almost one quarter of the 10,000 conference attendees participated in a straw poll, the results of which were announced upon the weekend’s adjournment. Just over half of the people there fell into the 18-25 age group. This considered, Ron Paul won the “who should run in 2012” poll by a ten-point margin. When this was announced, those who had voted for him cheered wildly, but, instead of conceding the results respectfully, the other, older half of the audience booed with childish malice. I was stunned.

I understand that Ron Paul has some unconventional ideas, many of which I myself have yet to get wholeheartedly onboard with. But he and his platform have accumulated a dedicated following of conservative youth the likes of which no other Republican candidate has seen in recent history. Ron Paul has young people charged with the same kind of fervor that allegedly won Barack Obama the 2008 election. For the first time in decades, there is a significant student movement right of center, and our party should be excited about it, embracing and supporting it so as to not let it burn out.

But for some reason, the party elders have failed to acknowledge the importance of my generation. Their disgusting reaction to Paul’s well-earned poll victory indicated to me that the stubborn, neoconservative, good ol’ boys of the GOP have learned nothing from the major political setbacks of the past few years. They are forging onward with closed eyes and plugged ears, unable and unwilling to regard any fault in their increasingly hypocritical, archaic rhetoric.

This conference was an opportunity for the frustrated conservative youth of America, thus far ignored by the whole of our party, to illuminate our goals for the future, and in a combination of provocative poll results, strategically-placed crowd reactions, and liberty-based student groups cropping up all over the place, I think we did so quite effectively. But instead of pausing to engage in dialogue with us in an attempt to better understand, the elders just booed.

The Republican Party has had trouble maintaining its youth of late, and it doesn’t even seem to care. We have a strong base of Millenials ripe for harvest, but our numbers are rapidly dwindling. With liberal indoctrination undermining our public education system and leftist agenda puppeteering a hoard of ubiquitous media lackeys all over our plastic culture, the Republican Party needs to be clinging for dear life onto the younger crowd it has, not further alienating us by denying our hopeful aspirations of pure, unadulterated liberty under the United States Constitution.

So when we chant “End the Fed!” on repeat, do not accuse us of being radicals, but open your eyes to the manifestation of an actual plan rooted in the fiscal conservatism you’ve always preached but failed to practice all along. When we openly welcome GOProud to co-sponsor our convention and audibly disapprove of an anti-gay speaker who amplified his homophobic epithets to the crowd awaiting Paul’s address, do not assume that we have lost all morality or sense of upright family values; rather, we have just found federally mandated marriage laws to be horribly unconstitutional and refuse to deny any American, regardless of sexual preference, the liberty God granted them. When we conjecture about a noninterventionist foreign policy, listen! We do not do so because of a peace-loving hippie mentality, but because of a philosophical continuity between our domestic policy and international affairs.

If we mean to have a strong future as Republicans, we have got to open up to this new wave of conservatism. 2008 was a major blow not only to our party, but to our country, and 2010 presents an incredible opportunity for us to get back on track. But we will make no progress and gain back no lost ground if, instead of admitting to our past wrongs, we continue to nominate the John McCains of the GOP. Our nation is in trouble, and if this bickering between our young and old does not cease and desist immediately, we are paving the way for liberals to maneuver an easy takeover of all the things that make America great.

Do not fear the youth movement. I am not yet endorsing a Ron Paul presidential campaign, mostly because I think the guy might kick the bucket soon, but that does not mean I don’t endorse the liberty movement he has so effectively driven. Our passion is not fading. Our tenacity is not crumbling. Our salivation over the decadent helping of freedom within our nation’s grasp is not drying out, and the Republican who wishes to further his party and usher in the next generation of political heroes needs to hand us the fork, not strap bibs on us and wait for the hunger to subside. It won’t. We are not going away.

I know that there is an invincible arrogance present in most youth, and my message here does little to deviate from that stereotype. For that, I apologize. But for the message itself, I have no remorse. I am not expecting an instant, complete, mass overhaul of the Republican philosophy; all I ask is to be heard and considered. I speak on behalf of my generation, my party, and my nation: divided, we cannot stand.