Young and Republican

St. Paul, Minnesota: One of the first speakers at tonight’s RNC event was a 20-year-old young woman named Ashley Gunn. Gunn began her speech by trying to disprove the old Socratic saying that “Children are Tyrants.” She told the crowd that when she was 12 years old she went to Africa on a mission trip, and the poverty she saw astounded her. 

“Why them, and not me,” she remembers thinking. She decided to start a non-profit called Students Aiding Indigent Families (SAIF), to prove that even young people are willing to make a difference. This part of the story drew a polite applause from the audience. When she said “In [making this group] we empower the urban poor to become homeowners without the aid of government spending,” however, the crowd went wild.

Being under the age of 40, Gunn was a minority in the Xcel Energy Center tonight (in terms of age, not in terms of politics), but she was not the only one. I talked to a number of young Republicans to find out what it’s like to be on the other side of the youth movement. When most people think about young voters, they think about Barack Obama supporters, and this is something that many young Republicans take issue with.

“If I leave my home town and am approached about politics people assume I’m an Obama zealot,” John Shad, 20, from Atlanta, Georgia told me. “A lot of young people are so naive, so easily fooled by smooth talking and trumped up speeches. I don’t fall for that shit. I like cold hard facts, and cold hard experience.”

Shad was not the only person I talked with who did not want to associate with other young people.

“A lot of people my age don’t have a grasp on what’s going on in the world,” a 22 year-old seating attendant who wished to remain nameless (attendants were not supposed to talk politics to guests). “It might be appealing to have the government try and bail out poor people, but that’s not the way the government works. It might be appealing to get out of Iraq, but that’s not the way war works. It might be appealing to have the government fix schools, but that’s not the way education works. McCain is talking in practical terms, and it’s time young people got more practical.”