With just a few weeks to go before President Joe Biden’s inauguration, the Republican Party is beginning to take stock of his future outside of President Donald Trump.
For many young Republicans, Trump’s loss points to an opening for new directions within the party. Several have said in interviews that they want the party to become more tolerant and inclusive while staying true to conservative values.
“The IDP has very, very good policies, a lot of winning policies, but it seems like we can often catch the losers and fight them like hell,” said Cameron Adkins, a second vice president student. of College Republicans at the University of Columbia. “In fact, they are losing trouble with the American people.”
Thirty-one percent of 18- to 24-year-old voters supported Trump in November, according to exit polls, down from 37 percent in 2016. The Generation Z block, born after 1996, makes up at least 10 percent of Americans population out, according to a report by the Brookings Institution, and it will only grow as the next election approaches.
Adkins, 19, said he hoped the party could expand its reach by continuing with the priorities of social issues such as guns and abortion, while embracing a rapidly diversifying electorate by expanding its rhetoric on racial injustice, which research shows that young people tend to. to be tapped more.
“We must try to expand our reach, even if it costs us,” of the more traditional Republican voters, he said. “I think I’m willing to lose as long as we do the right thing.”
Clay Robinson, a leader at Republicans College at Arizona State University, also said he wants the party to focus more on inclusivity.
“Our generation is much more concerned about social issues than, say, economic issues or anything else. I think it’s a sign that we really care about communities and the well – being of our people, not just their pocket books,” he said. Robinson said. 19. “It is a more holistic approach to the health of every individual in the country.”
Several young Republicans have specifically highlighted LGBTQ rights and climate change as essential to the use of the Gen Z block because Gen Zers is familiar with these issues.
That is why Isaiah De Alba (19) said that the Republican Party needs diverse and young perspectives as he does. De Alba, who grew up in a Mexican Cuban household in Los Angeles, is the political director of the College of Republicans at the University of Oregon. He voted for Trump, but hopes that someone who acknowledges that the country ‘was not the same place it was 30, 40, 50 years ago’ is leading the party.
“I think the term ‘conservatism’ has given this real bad representative so long,” he said, predicting that the party’s ethos would evolve to think less religiously and more forward, for example.
“I feel it needs to change in a way so that people can understand it a lot more than just a bunch of old racist whites’ as they would like to see it, but it’s really a lot more than that.”
However, not all young conservatives are hoping for a sea change. While most see a future for the party outside the Trump presidency, Sydney Salatto has expressed frustration over lawmakers who they say turned their backs on Trump after his loss.
While he continued to fight the outcome of the election nearly two months after it ended, Republican officials began to break with Trump over his spread of unfounded allegations of voter fraud and his refusal to recognize Biden as the winner.
“I want to see a lot of people buried and uprooted,” said Salatto, 22, president of a conservative women’s organization at the University of Tampa. “I think they’re just as bad as the Democrats.”
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Salatto said the party is no longer a ‘cohesive group’ and that lawmakers distancing themselves from Trump are not serving their constituents.
Despite the dissonance, all the young voters said that Trumpism is here to stay.
Robinson said that while he supports Trump’s “America First” policy, it may not be best put forward by Trump himself. He said the party needed someone who “does not necessarily turn people off like Trump does”.
They hold out for new faces to lead the country.
“It’s going to be hard to stay relevant and get re-elected,” Robinson said. “People are talking at the ballot box, and if they do not want to tackle these issues, they will pay the price.”