Among conservatives and Republican circles, there is a lot of talk about "persuasion" or "getting the word out" on conservative ideas.
I have a better idea: just tell everyone that free markets work, and state control does not.
The facts speak for themselves. Since President Obama enacted "Obamacare", health care costs have gone up, while access has gone down, and now the citizens of the United States are hurting under more taxes.
I sent a blog post about the rich paying "their fair share" to Washington State, and the Patch.com network spread the post to all the statewide Patch networks. The debate was impressive. Most people have "no clue" about the damage of government interventions, and most people are not going to read "Townhall.com" or visit Fox News to get the other side.
University outreach is a must. Texas Congressman Ron Paul had the strongest following among the youth vote, a growing number of whom are tolerant on social issues yet virulent about the spending spree which is bankrupting the present and ruining their future. I still recall meeting with one young voter in Venice a few months ago, who told me that he decided to become a Republican, despite the overwhelming animosity that young conservatives face on college campuses these days. The professors condemn any ideas which make nothing of the isolated intellect and require a man to look outside of himself to respect the over-arching systems of trade which exceed the capacities of man to design, implement, or control.
Dinesh D'Souza, the author of Lettters to a Young Conservative, shocked his campus peers with the help of right-leaning academics who modified Buckley Brainchild "National Review" and modified it to the college level, skewering inane, unwary academics and left-wing interest groups with pitch, wit, and well-placed sarcasm. One vulgar example. While campus interests wanted to open a club which promoted the "gay agenda", D'Souza and friends drew up their own club proposal: "The Bestiality club". Horses and dogs, run and hide! By pushing the limits of moral relativism to a relavity unknown limit, D'Souza and friends made an open mockery of the Inter Club Council at Dartmouth. Their request was rejected, incidentally enough.
At the outset, the young have a bias toward understanding things chiefly from their own point of view, one which stems from the adolscent revelations of "right and wrong" clashing in a world filled with varying and vying notions of "right and wrong" which most people talk about yet fail to live up to. Like the young Rory Collins from the Disney Movie "Bedknobs and Broomsticks", the age of adolscence does not immediately lend itself to "believing", i. e. accepting as true realities which cannot be perceived right away.
Beyond persuasion, the mere announcement that Republicans want to lower taxes for all convinces more people than most realize. One minority student in a government class told me that he had thought that Republicans are "the bad guys". When he learned that in general Democrats want to grow the government and expand the tax burden, he was shocked. When they get a whiff of the truth, most students open their minds to accept a conservative point of view. If more young people talked to the business owners down the street, they might learn a thing or two about the long-term yet unseen damage that comes from taxing "the rich."
The young vote, the minority vote, they all want to know the truth, and the GOP can tell them the truth. If someone goes there, then they will come. The Republican leadership has not made a move.
House Speaker Boehner, like too many people in the GOP Establishment, just does not get it. Most people are not sold on the benefits of the free market. Too often, students in substandard public schools or overcrowded colleges are taking in mincy, chinty pablum about the "evils" of capitalism. After more than a decade of being bombarded with the "badness" of supply, demand, and the supernatural order of markets and trade, small wonder that most kids graduate with no understanding of businesses, economics, or the impropriety of state intervention.
Not persuasion, but announcement. Our young people need and deserve to know the "Good News" about free markets which make free people, about the power of forces, trends, and cultural realities which transcend or thoughts and feelings, which define us more stably and ably than the musing of Ivy League academics. They spend all of their time thinking about how the "world should work", and they end up "should-ing" all over themselves, their students, and the professionals in training which they send out into a world which does not play by artificial constructs or postmodern mendacities.