The whole package is damaged. The vehicle (Republican Party) is not cool - only concerned with protecting rich white men - according to the media's wildly successful portrayal. I'm just about at the point where I think it would take too long to change that perception, especially with young people. I think we need a completely new makeover and new spokespeople to convey our message.
Instead of constantly talking about how the Democrats promise freebies to worthless do-nothings - we should be enlightening people about how the Democrats (and Republicans) - ergo Washington DC - are actually THE biggest corporation in the US! When you can relate "corporate greed" to how the government treats us little people - I think you can start to reach the young people that have been indoctrinated to have this "knee-jerk" reaction to the concept of "corporations".
I completely understand what you are saying Alice. You can look at recent history for two distinct ways that younger people were reached by a political/governance message. On one hand (especially for 2008), the 0bama campaign was very successful in reaching out to masses of the "brain dead" (I will use that term as a convenient shorthand, fully understanding that not all that responded were brain dead, in fact, some small portion were fully cognizant of the radical agenda that would soon be unleashed) younger folks by basically projecting an image of "the young, hip, black guy is really cool and is going to fix everything that that damn old, rich, white guy screwed up." All it took was a splashy social media presence, getting a lot of young pop culture icons on board, and well, the rest is history. (The take away from this was how easy it was to manipulate a mass of non-thinking youth.)
On the other hand, what was the only other political/governance movement of recent time to attract a groundswell of support and popularity from younger people?
Ron Paul.
In so many ways the Liberty Movement that grew out of his 2008 & 2012 campaigns attracted almost the polar opposite of the "0bama Youth." (Again, I am going to generalize for the point of the discussion, certainly there were/are exceptional examples of what many like to blanket categorize as "typical" Ron Paul supporters: pot smoking hippy kids.) But in general, these were/are young people that are using their brains, thinking about the overwhelming encroachment of government and cronyism in our everyday lives, and responding to the same messages about Freedom, Liberty, and Natural rights that our Founders discussed and enshrined in the Constitution. The Liberty Movement is also "young, hip, and cool" but it is not a set of empty, meaningless platitudes. It focuses on many of the same principles and ideals that most posters here hold in high regard.
(And yes, as a matter of full disclosure, I personally have supported and voted for Ron Paul every chance that I had. And my late 20s son has been very active in the Liberty Movement. So yes, I speak from much personal experience in this matter, and can be called a "Paulbot" by anyone that chooses to use that term.)
My reason for describing all of this is, not to set myself up as a target for the name callers, but rather to suggest an example of how something that you are talking about actually has worked. In some sense, the Liberty Movement has found a way to make being a "Patriot" (to use EC's label from above) cool, hip, and relevant to a large portion of the younger generations. The problem that we run into, as witnessed by the numerous discussions in all of the Tea Party threads of late, is the there are two segments of the overall "conservative" superset that can not be comfortable in all aspects of the Liberty Movement. Of course those segments are the 'neocons' that reject the principle of non-interventionism out of hand, and the 'social conservatives' that don't understand that it is not a legitimate role of government to legislate morality.
I guess, all that I am suggesting is that we do have a ready made example of how the younger generations can respond to a message of government constrained by the Constitution, personal liberty and freedom, and the beauty of the operation of a free market economy. To me, this is probably the best starting point to attracting and gaining young people in significant numbers to eventually make a difference.
