It's the Message, Not the Machine

I'm not going to write at length on this again, because I've already done so a couple times. I will, though, continue to point out Republicans who don't understand that it's their message that's the problem with young voters, not the machine.

The latest is found in a St. Petersburg Times article on Thursday discussing the Florida Republican Party's difficulty attracting youth to the party. Emphasis is mine.

Among the most ominous trends for the state GOP? Younger voters.

Exit polls showed Obama beat John McCain among Florida voters 18-29 by 24 percentage points. Just as Ronald Reagan won over younger voters and kept them aligned with the GOP for a generation, today's younger voters stand to be a reliable Democratic voting block.

That threat also is reflected in Greer's priorities for the coming year. He has created a "youth outreach department" to promote the party to young voters and plans a big youth conference this summer. The party is also borrowing a page from the Obama campaign by ramping up its technological capacity to promote the GOP.

"We're going to develop alternative methods of communicating with the party, and we're going to be developing outlets for people to help drive the Republican message and in some cases create the Republican message," Greer said. "We're going to be utilizing that with much more extensive use of blogging, FaceBook, Twitter, multiple components."

They're going to need much more message creation than message driving. As we've constantly discussed here, today's youth simply don't like the Republican message. If the Florida GOP wants to break through with youth, Greer should realize that no matter what kind of "new" medium they use to communicate with youth, in the end, they need something worthwhile to communicate.