The VA GOP has one major problem ... age! I quit the county committee some years ago because as I looked around, the ‘young guys’ when I first joined all had gray hair .. no new young blood. And you just can’t do well in elections without young, new blood. They’re the ones who will walk door to door, do the lit drops, work the polls, etc. The old folks who’ve been doing it forever seem to like the committee meetings to get together with (literally) old friends. Nice, but that doesn’t win elections.
Something has to stir up the youth vote, but to most of the 20-somethings I know and see around here, “gay rights” is the civil rights of their generation, so they’re not about to vote for the GOP.
True. I tried to be friendly with the old folks at a Cantor booth who were complaining about no young people, and they froze me out when I wanted to talk about a few issues ... They’re in it for the chumminess, I think. They especially didn’t want to talk about the Tea Party...
“The VA GOP has one major problem ... age! I quit the county committee some years ago because as I looked around, the ‘young guys’ when I first joined all had gray hair .. no new young blood.”
The dems have much the same problem. Truth be told, the committees are largely irrelevant these days. The real work is done by candidates and the dem associated groups like the unions who make the phone calls and do the legwork. The gop really doesn’t have the same sort of shadow support network. And they lose as a result. No GOTV = no wins.
At a certain point having the bigger checkbook just doesn’t get you the votes. You’ve got to communicate with people and it seems the gop doesn’t really want to do that or is unable to do that.