I think the GOP, or one Republican at least, has finally figured out how to reach that elusive youth market: just microtarget the most dickish, loutish youths you can find and they'll be extremely receptive to the Republican message.
New Hampshire GOP candidate Scott Brown ditched the usual campaign trail stops on Saturday and instead attempted to bond with a younger, rowdier set of voters at the University of New Hampshire homecoming tailgate....
Brown attended the party at the invitation of the school's College Republicans, and by all accounts, attracted a large, enthusiastic crowd. But as anyone who has ever attended a college tailgate knows, it can be hard to control what's going on around you....
In video posted by the New Hampshire Democratic Party, as Brown walked through the sea of tailgaters, there were shouts of "F**k Jeanne Shaheen!" and "Elizabeth Warren sucks!" referring to the Democrat from Massachusetts who unseated Brown from his Senate seat in that state in 2012.
The language became even more graphic at points, with one man shouting "F**k her right in the p***y" (00:04 in the video above), although it wasn't clear if he was referring to Shaheen or Warren. At 01:07 in the video, a man also appears to refer to Shaheen as a c**t....
Republicans have been wasting their time trying to send the message that the party embraces multiculturalism, recycling, and New York Times reading, or hipster beards and wardrobes, or young women. Really, this is the way for the party to go: focus on the most boorish young males, tell them (in code, if necessary) that you share their misogyny and respect their sense of entitlement, and voila: you'll pick off frattish jocks, woman-bashing gamers, and the men's rights/pickup artist crowd. Republicans should just target obnoxious white dudes in the youth demographic -- the same thing they do with all other age groups. Then just keep working to suppress everyone else's vote and they'll be golden.
It should have been obvious that Brown is a perfect candidate for this approach -- though another guy who's probably well suited to this approach is Paul Ryan, the frattiest 2016 wannabe. I suppose that's why he's favored by Republican millennials over all the party's other presidential aspirants, according to that recent Fusion poll. Maybe Ryan should drop the phony earnestness act and embrace his inner lout.
2 comments:
"Embrace their inner lout!"
It's all they have, anymore...
This is a great observation, Steve-- and I echo Victor's sentiment that this is what the GOP is at their core. They might as well just own it, since every other "outreach" effort they try to the demographics that they DON'T represent seems to fail, anyway.
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