college republican

Albert Einstein once said “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” By that definition President Obama has gone insane. Or perhaps he’s not so much insane as he is just suffering from a bout of memory loss. Does he not remember how badly his previous effort at pumping money into the economy went? Nevertheless, here we are, a year and a half later and creeping unemployment remains undeterred by the federal government’s intervention and the President is pitching another stimulus.

By politically necessity this one is much smaller. He’s decided to take a piecemeal approach, breaking the approach into three prongs: (1) $50 billion in infrastructure improvements, (2) a R&D tax credit extension, and (3) an investment tax rebate. Nevermind that President Obama attempted to sell his $800 billion stimulus plan last February by listing previous “failed theories that helped lead us into this crisis” including “that we can meet our enormous tests with half-steps and piecemeal measures.” Sounds to me like he’s embraced the piecemeal approach. Must be that memory loss.

The worst of the plan is President Obama’s decision to throw $50 billion at infrastructure improvements. After all, what happened to all those “shovel-ready” infrastructure jobs that the first stimulus was supposed to contain? An even better question was posed in this Investor’s Business Daily editorial,

But why in the world do we need another stimulus when we’re not even close to exhausting the funds allocated for the last one?

This when $275 billion of the original $838 billion has still yet to be doled out. More specifically, less than a third of the $230 billion allocated to infrastructure projects has been spent. So with literally hundreds of billions of dollars worth of infrastructure investment still pending, why are we tacking on an additional $50 billion?

Well, because it sounds good. 150,000 miles of roads will be rebuilt. 4,000 miles of rail will be constructed or maintained. 150 miles of runways will be rehabilitated.

But while Obama was clear about how many miles of pavement or tracks would be laid, there was never a hint of how many jobs would be created. Apparently, the government is finally getting out of the “jobs created or saved” business. What it should be getting out of is the stimulus business altogether. The first one was an utter failure. In the last quarter the economy grew at 1.6 percent – not even fast enough to keep unemployment stable, much less than the speed necessary to actually create jobs. In fact the economy shed 54,000 jobs in August, a depressing finale to what was billed as the “Recovery Summer.”

The only true history made by the stimulus bill was the record levels of debt and deficits it has wrought upon America’s balance sheet. As the CBO wrote in their latest Budget and Economic Outlook, “relative to the size of the economy, this year’s deficit is expected to be the second largest shortfall in the past 65 years.” I’m betting you could guess what year had the largest. Things are not projected to get much better. As the CBO explains, “Beyond the 10-year budget window, the nation will face daunting long-term fiscal challenges . . . Continued large deficits and the resulting increases in federal debt over time would reduce long-term economic growth.”

$50 billion is not the cure to our problems, it only adds to them. The economic multiplier effect of Keynesian economics only works in theory. In the harsh reality we live in businesses care little for economic theory. They care about their bottom lines. They care about an uncertain policy environment clouded by an activist government. They care about how much taxes they are going to have to pay now, and in the future, as we are forced to pay for this unprecedented spending binge.

Democrats have already gone “all in” on their original stimulus package. They gambled with taxpayer money and lost. Now they want to ante up another $50 billion. But they’ve tried spending us out of this recession over and over again. Can we really expect different results this time around? A sane question likely to be ignored by an out-of-touch Washington.

by Brandon Greife, Political Director of the College Republican National Committee

http://speakout.crnc.org/blog/2010/09/08/trying-the-same-thing-but-expecting-different-results/

Immigration is a problem longing for a fix. Unfortunately, it has been accorded leper status in Washington. Too broken to leave alone but too politically perilous to touch with a ten-foot pole. One need look no further than Arizona to realize the incendiary nature of attempting to come up with an immigration solution. Where there is much to lose, there is also much to gain. That is why Republicans must take the initiative, outflank their political opponents, and craft an immigration reform plan that not only preserves conservative values but potentially captures a new bloc of conservative voters.

Republicans have long been labeled as xenophobes when it comes to immigration. It is largely the result of a debate that has been couched in between two equally unattractive views. The word “immigrant” at its worst conjures up images of people who are stealing American jobs and living off our social welfare system without paying a dime in taxes to support it. At its best, they are unskilled laborers, doing the jobs Americans won’t do while living off our social welfare system without paying a dime in taxes to support it. Either way, not exactly a rosy picture. With this mindset, Republicans are doomed to forever fight an uphill battle when it comes to standing behind a viable, working option for immigration reform.

Sadly, without such reform Republicans will be doomed to wander the political wilderness. The fact is Hispanics will be a majority in this country by as soon as 2050. To remain a viable political party you will eventually have to capture this growing voting pool. Fortunately, and many Republicans don’t understand this, Hispanic-Americans tend to be conservative. In 2006 pollster David Winston asked registered voters to rate themselves on a 1 to 9 scale from very liberal to very conservative. Winston found that Hispanic Americans viewed themselves were more conservative than the rest of an already center-right country.

They are a natural source of votes but we’ve got to wise up to capture them.

This is where I’m going to lose some of you. But let me go ahead and say, wising up does not equal selling out. I understand that a party is about more than politics, it is about principle. Fortunately, reforming our stance on immigration isn’t just good politics, it meshes perfectly with conservative principles. But, it will require a change in mindset.

We’ve all heard the melting pot argument. That the United States is a nation of immigrants, melting together to form the essential fabric that binds us to this nation. All true, but very blah. Even with this argument immigration bas become a convoluted issue, existing as the enormous elephant in the room. Grasping the “melting pot” argument relies on a sense of history and fairness – concepts that are intangible and don’t really come with any personal benefits. Today, with unemployment staying stubbornly high and deficits clouding our fiscal future, it is a much easier to argue that illegal immigrants are taking our jobs and eating up our taxes. So what can we do to reframe the debate?

Republicans should put forward an immigration reform package that promises to increase jobs, lower the number of unskilled immigrants, and boosts the number of taxpayers. Sounds conservative. Now, what if I told you it could be done in a way palatable to Hispanic voters.

The first step is to change the make-up of our immigrant population. “Unskilled” and “immigrant” are too often viewed as inseparable. It needn’t be this way. After all you wouldn’t view Albert Einstein this way. But imagine how many fewer jobs America would have without people like these:

• Jerry Yang – Taiwanese founder of Yahoo
• Sergey Brin – Russian founder of Google
• Andrew Grove – Hungarian founder of Intel
• Andrew Carnegie – Scottish business mogul
• Levi Strauss – German inventor of blue Jeans
• John Kluge – German owner of Metromedia – one of largest privately held companies in the US

Immigrants success extends much deeper. A study by Harvard researcher Vivek Wawha found that “one in four engineering and technology companies founded between 1995 and 2005 had an immigrant founder. We found that these companies employed 450,000 workers and generated $52 billion in revenue in 2006.” Moreover, foreign nationals residing in the United States represented 25.6 percent of all patent applications. In Silicon Valley, one of the primary entrepreneurial centers in the United States, 52 percent of tech and engineering companies were founded by an immigrant.

Immigrants do not have to be the job takers. They can be the job creators. But first we have to create an immigration policy capable of attracting and harnessing their talents. One way to do that would be to change the H-1B visa system. The visa, which is provided for immigrants that want to work in the U.S., has helped draw the top talent in the international work force. Unfortunately, as Darrel West argues in the Wall Street Journal,

“[O]nly 15% of our annual visas are now set aside for employment purposes. Of these, some go to seasonal agricultural workers, while a small number of H-1B visas (65,000) are reserved for “specialty occupations” such as scientists, engineers, and technological experts.”

65,000. That’s it. Applications for this type of visa are normally gone within the first two days of the application period. In other words, while the H-1B visa should be luring the best and the brightest international talent, we are shutting off the tap. The Cato Institute argues that such a low cap “is hampering output, especially in high-technology sectors, and forcing companies to consider moving production offshore.” The expansion should not be limited to H-1Bs. Other skilled worker visas such as the L-1, which allows foreign workers to relocate to a multi-national corporation’s US office, and O-1, which allows aliens with “extraordinary abilities” in a particular field, should also be emphasized and revised.

Given the inherent power of these visas to actually create jobs why has the government been so slow to change it? Partially because of the misperception of so many voters who believe that increasing quotas will take away jobs from Americans. This logic doesn’t have a basis in fact. As Cato explains:

“Fears that H-1B workers cause unemployment and depress wages are unfounded. H-1B workers create jobs for Americans by enabling the creation of new products and spurring innovation. High-tech industry executives estimate that a new H-1B engineer will typically create demand for an additional 3-5 American workers.”

This is the chance for Republicans to take the lead on immigration. Republicans have long been thought to have lost the debate – and have the lack of minority support to prove it.  The key to winning the support and turning the debate around is to focus on immigrants as realistic and viable solution to the economic trouble. Immigration reform could be the jobs bill we’ve all been waiting for and with a price-tag much cheaper than the so-called stimulus.

by Brandon Greife, Political Director of the College Republican National Committee

http://speakout.crnc.org/blog/2010/07/26/republicans-must-outflank-democrats-on-immigration-reform/

We simply cannot afford to lose a generation of young voters to the Democrats. As a follow-up to my first post from a few days back, I’d like to propose some specific changes that would better serve the Republican Party in recapturing the youth vote.

Establish a Young Voter Outreach arm of the Republican National Committee

We need to fight tooth and nail to bring young voters back to the Republican Party. Yes, the Young Republican National Federation and College Republican National Committee exist. The problem is that neither of these organizations actively serve to “sell” the Republican Party to young voters – rather, their purpose is to engage young voters who are already affiliated with the GOP. Thus, the Young Voter Outreach arm would serve to accomplish this, demonstrating to young voters that the Republican Party actually cares about winning their vote and is not just the party of older generations.

This arm of the RNC must be overseen by – surprise – a Republican under the age of 30. It would be responsible for working with the RNC’s eCampaign folks to launch new, state-of-the-art websites, blogs, and other online projects that are designed specifically to appeal to young voters who are not necessarily Republicans. One of the goals of these projects should be to serve to answer crucial questions like, “Why is the Republican Party’s platform the right one for me as a young voter?” or “Why should I, as a young voter, be alarmed about the Democrats’ plan to [insert bad policy here – redistribute the wealth, raise taxes, etc.]?”

But there’s more. As a Party, we need to begin building and then maintaining a strong base of young, up-and-coming Republicans, who in the near future can begin running for the U.S. House and Senate. These young candidates will help allow us to pursue a 435 district strategy while bringing new, fresh faces to the table. Therefore, the Young Voter Outreach arm would be responsible for identifying and recruiting these folks, but more importantly, it would encourage them to begin running for local offices and provide training sessions to show them how to run for an office and win.

Differentiate from Democrats Through Ideals of Limited Government

Over the next two years, the Democrats will look to expand government in many ways. As I noted in my first column, many young voters are decidedly libertarian, and thus they’ll frown on these changes – a circumstance that Republicans, as the party of free-markets and personal liberty, can capitalize upon.

Despite this, young voters are going to find it difficult to support the Republican Party if it remains the party that condones government intervention in such issues as gay marriage or the behavior of two consenting adults in their own bedroom. These socially conservative issues may be important to voters in the other generations, but in the eyes of many of my peers, government has no place in getting involved in these matters. Indeed, the Republican Party’s continued support of government involvement in these issues continues to reinforce the notion to many young voters that the GOP is the party of the older generations.

Clearly, some sort of common ground needs to be reached if the Republican Party wishes to appeal to the young voting bloc while not losing social conservatives. In terms of policy, what could this balance look like? On issues such as gay marriage, Republicans could advocate the voters in each state making their own statewide decision. Specifically, California’s Proposition 8 is a phenomenal example of how the voters – rather than the government – can determine their state’s position on this sort of issue. Abortion, however, is a slightly different animal. If you believe (as I do) that life begins at conception, then abortion is, quite simply, the infringement of another human being’s right to life. Since the federal government is charged with protecting people’s “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” Republicans can fairly argue that it is the federal government’s responsibility to fight to limit abortion.

Taking this all into account, a forward-looking, pro-young voter platform statement for the Republican Party of the future should look something like this:

The Republican Party is the party of individual freedom, limited government, and personal choice. At the federal level, we will fight to reduce the size of government and make it more accountable to the people who fund it. We will fight to protect every human being’s God-given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And at the statewide level, we will work with the citizens to protect and preserve the traditional values upon which this great nation was built.

Rethink Our Branding and Organizational Identity

This one’s so simple, yet we cannot underestimate its importance: the fact is that a huge part of what drew young voters to Barack Obama was his hip, corporate-like branding and identity. Some might argue that this is shallow, but I strongly disagree. Instead, this is the reality of effective marketing. Indeed, it is the same reason that some brands flourish and while others fail miserably. Marketing is one of the most critical topics in the business world, and Barack Obama has taught us that it can be equally as significant in politics.

Just look at a side-by-side of the two candidate’s logos. Obama’s “O” logo probably has near 100% brand recognition – you don’t need the “Obama ‘08″ below it to know what it represents. On the other hand, if you took away McCain-Palin and left only the star at the top with the two lines extending out from it, would anyone have a clue what it represents? Nope.

Further, Obama’s simplistic yet impeccably memorable slogan of “hope” and “change” were consistent and didn’t change in the slightest since he entered the race. McCain didn’t maintain such a consistent message, and unfortunately, his “Country First” slogan that was implemented near the end of the race does not have the appeal of “hope” and “change.”

Fortunately, the Democratic Party itself does not have a branding or identity advantage over the Republican Party. This creates a unique opening for the GOP to take the initiative. Redesign the RNC’s logo and GOP.com to reflect the trends of Web 2.0. Find a unifying, clear-cut message for the party that carries wide-spread appeal. And most importantly, offer resources so that our candidates as well as our state and local parties can do the same.

Conclusion

The changes that I’ve identified in this post are necessary for the Republican Party to transform itself as the party of the future. A huge component that will be necessary to accomplishing this is the GOP’s ability to attract younger, fresh faces – the people who are this country’s future. Ultimately, the changes I propose all add up to one overreaching goal: to transform the Republican Party into one that represents all generations and embodies the core principles that make this nation so great.

This entry is cross-posted at NextGenGOP.