'Young Guns' Shoot for Younger Audience on Facebook
The trio of House Republicans known as the “Young Guns,” will head to California to host a “Facebook Live” discussion Monday evening. The goal of the group is to listen to what a younger generation of Americans feel is important at a time when congressional ratings are at an all-time low.
Republican Reps. Eric Cantor (Va.), Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) and Paul Ryan (Wis.), who lead the “Young Guns” effort, will take questions in front of about 100 employees at the Palo Alto headquarters of Facebook. A similar format was used for President Obama and Oprah Winfrey.
The event will begin at 6 p.m. ET/3 p.m. PT and advance questions may be submitted here.
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The trio published a book last August titled Young Guns: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders. Led by McCarthy, the group’s effort in recruiting new, younger candidates to target Democrat incumbents was highly successful in the 2010 elections.
McCarthy, who as Young Republican National Chairman in the late 1990s excelled at engaging young voters, said the Internet brings “more transparency, more accountability” to government.
Speaking on how an online generation can help House Republicans advance their agenda, he told Politico, “We’ve got 500 million Facebook friends that helps us move it through the Senate.”
“If we can begin to create communities online that actually will help support the conversation and debate, really what we can do is increase the confidence that people actually can have in a representative government,” Cantor told Politico.
Ryan referred to Facebook as “a great, innovative product.” “This is a great way to reach Americans about how to fix this country’s problems … It’s important to engage with people on every platform we can, and Facebook is a great one,” he said in the interview.
In 2008, young voters helped President Obama into the White House; he won 66 percent of the vote from those under 30. However, Democrats are increasingly worried about keeping the younger, millennial voters in their corner moving into the 2012 elections.
With so many younger workers unemployed, Obama’s honeymoon with the group may have ended. To compound the situation, many of the same workers have high balances on student loans that some are unable to pay or make payments on.
Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway, who conducted a poll for the youth advocacy group Generation Opportunity, thinks the 2012 elections will be much closer than they realize. “The question is not for whom young people will vote, but whether they will bother at all,” Conway told The Hill.
Alicia Menendez, a Democratic Strategist, noted that more people are turning 18 and becoming eligible to vote each year, and more and more of them are minorities.
