As the crowd began to roar and started into the slow chant of “four more years,” fellow College Republicans began hugging each other, screaming and whistling with excitement and breathing deep sighs of relief. The election night victory party for College Republicans was a sight to be seen. All of this celebration did not stop until re-elected Gov. Scott Walker appeared on the television and gave his victory speech.
That night was full of success for Republicans around the nation. State governments including Wisconsin were filled with Republicans, and in the Senate, Republicans took the majority by storm.
Despite this temporary moment of success and celebration, many Republicans would soon start to ask themselves a simple question: Where do we go from here? In other words, even though we had achieved some success, Republicans throughout the nation began to ask themselves, what do we, as Republicans, need to do in order to maintain this success?
Among College Republicans, the consensus was clear. In the future, Republicans need to continue to brand themselves as the party that provides equal opportunity of success to everyone regardless of how or where they were born. Even though we cannot promise equal success rates, we can offer everyone an equal opportunity.
One of the best ways to facilitate this equal opportunity and increase the likelihood of success is to focus on economic issues. Economic incentives have the power to drag people out of poverty and help the nation advance. One of the best ways to achieve this goal in the future would be to completely rewrite our tax code. This does not even mean that we would need to reduce it (even though that would be nice too), but it needs to be simplified. Too often, businesses that could give workers jobs are often hindered by just paying people to figure out how to pay taxes, let alone paying them.
Secondly, College Republicans want to take the message to the people that government is very ineffective at improving the lives of its citizens. Even though government can provide temporary relief through government assistance, like hiring more public employees, etc., government solutions often provide solutions that must be fixed in the long run. In other words, whereas government solutions might serve as band-aid for a cut, free market solutions serve as stitches. Perhaps this idea was best put by the College Republicans Digital Director Anthony Birch, “Our party can provide ideas that promote individuals and hard work that allow people to make better lives for themselves. Not ideas that have a government dictate what makes a better life like measuring success by the number of people on government assistance.”
A third measure that Republicans should take to secure future success is to continue the diversification of party leaders. As the world continues getting more and more diverse, diversification of party leaders will be more important to make sure that Republicans can effectively reach out to everyone, not just their typical voter base. Great examples of this idea can be found in people such as U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, U.S. Rep.-Elect Mia Love, R-Utah, and U.S. Rep.-Elect Will Hurd, R-Texas.
In order to ensure success of this strategy, Republicans need to take these ideas to urban areas that have typically voted Democratic in the past. Many of these areas are sick of the band-aid fixes that their Democratic majorities have put on many issues. For examples of successful implementation of this, check out what happened in Illinois as Gov. Bruce Rauner triumphed in the race for governor over the Democrat incumbent, Pat Quinn. Clearly, these ideas are powerful in areas that are sick of hearing that more government is the solution to everything.
So, all in all, the future of the Republican Party looks bright, and we are looking forward to 2016 with anticipation. If we can focus on the ideas outlined in this article, we will achieve continued success. In conclusion, I will finish this article by saying what I have said this entire semester: right now is an exciting time to be a College Republican.
