Conservatives Of Tomorrow: Charlie Smith

“There are three big things we have been proud of. First, a few years before we came into office, there had been a scandal with a direct mail company. It didn’t have a huge impact outside of the organization, but it dominated things within the organization for years. To people in the CRNC that were involved at the time, it was an indictment on the integrity of the future of the Republican Party that something like this was happening in our organization. We wanted to correct it because it was the right thing to do. There was no process in place to prevent it from happening again. We put in some amendments to the constitution that stipulated how contracts have to go through a process before they are approved. Cleaning all this up restored a lot of confidence in the leadership of the CRNC. Second, we recruited 142,000 new members with fewer field representatives than in years past, so we have had a substantial increase in the number of people recruited and amount of activism per field representative. Third, technology is something we put a lot of emphasis on. When we took over the organization, it had not been technologically updated in a long time. Our field representatives were recruiting with pen and paper. We wanted the process to be digitized. One of the problems was that you would get 1,000 people on a list and couldn’t read the names. The quality of information was important to us. We wanted to fix this. We build a system called STORM (Student Tools for Online Republican Mobilization), which we will be rebranding as MyCR within the month. STORM did two things for us. It gave us a database. There had been no national membership for College Republicans. We finally digitized the whole process. The other side of it is being able to utilize the power of social mobilization and social networking. Of course we have all seen the rise of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube and this election cycle saw those tools start to be used as political tools instead of just for social networking and meeting friends. Especially with our generation, people are starting to use social networking and peer to peer contacts as primary means to make decisions. We saw this as being the wave of future political communication. People in our generation spend less time watching TV than they do on the internet. The internet is where they will find information and make decisions. This is where we have to be active, as an organization, a party and a movement to get our message out there and provide an opportunity for these people to be active should they find our message attractive.”

“The Republican Party should be doing three things. First, building up the technological infrastructure so when we have the right message, we can disseminate it quickly. The Obama campaign understood the power of new forms of communication and that is something the Republican Party needs to understand. Second, getting the message right. Young people do not view the Republicans as a realistic alternative to what the Democrats offer, so that is why we are losing 2 to 1. We need to take a stand on the stimulus bill to get that brand back.   I think the small government economic approach is where we really win with young voters. Third, changing the culture of the party. Many of Barack Obama’s top staffers were 20 and 30 years old. It is time to bring up new blood through party, both as candidates, insider campaign operatives and regular activists. The Obama campaign made young people feel welcome when they walked in the door. They were given jobs with responsibilities and goals. That is something that is missing in our party. We need to open the door for young people to become more involved.”

“Invest in some really good research about young people. There is not much out there about what young people look for in terms of ideology and messaging. We need to figure out what those things are. Our generation is not lost yet.”