The College Fix

Heading into this year’s CPAC conference, young conservatives and libertarians say the economy, deficit and debt are the core issues the nation faces.

Organized by the American Conservative Union, CPAC is an event for conservatives to communicate, strategize and also conduct a ‘Straw Poll’ on the favorite presidential candidate. Fueled by a healthy student discount, college conservatives and libertarians from all over the country will be among the 10,000 descending on Washington, D.C. for this year’s conference.

“We’re thinking about how to get ready for 2012 and keep this momentum going,” said Robert Lockwood, the Director of Communications for the College Republican National Committee.

He credits that momentum to the 15 percent unemployment among college graduates, down from 20 percent last year, which he believes is the number one issue on college students’ minds.

“Kids go to college to secure job preference,” he said. “Obama told them something (about unemployment), it wasn’t true.”

Lockwood believes unemployment is the main reason independents are crossing to the right.

Bonnie Kristian has a slightly different financial concern. Kristian is the Director of Communications for Young Americans for Liberty, a libertarian student group attending CPAC.

“The single most important issue facing us today is undoubtedly the ever-expanding national debt and the government spending habits which produced it,” she said. “Our government’s unsustainable debt is poised to overtake our GDP.”

According to Kristian, cheap credit affects consumer confidence and can produce unsustainable booms, like the housing bubble in the mid-2000s.

“As we all learned the hard way in late 2008, the bubble eventually bursts,” she said. “The longer we continue this reckless pattern of printing and spending our way into debt and inflating away the dollars’ value, the more painful the next correction, or recession, will be.”

Though her group does not endorse any candidates, she herself would support Rep. Ron Paul in 2012.

“Dr. Paul’s message of liberty – even in the face of 434 to 1 votes – is one which unquestionably appeals to young people, as evidenced by the huge crowds which turn out every time he steps foot on a college campus,” she said.

Kevin DeAnna, President of the Youth for Western Civilization, an organization whose mission is to “inspire action on issues of importance to the survival of our civilization,” takes a different tack on the political climate. According to DeAnna, the YWL’s mission is to “fight mass multiculturalism” and “racial preference.”

The biggest issue facing America today?

“Immigration, which affects every other issue,” DeAnna said. “You can’t talk about health care without talking about immigration…you can’t talk about anything else without getting into immigration.”

He predicted that at CPAC the majority of people will be rallying and celebrating lowering spending, but that “mass immigration” is the key topic.

DeAnna believes the Tea Party movement is a good thing, though it resists generalization.

“Attempts to define the Tea Party run into trouble, because different sets of principles vary from group to group.” According to DeAnna, Tea Party contingents can have wildly differing policies on social policy and immigration, since there is no one body.

“The Tea Party has to avoid being just another version of the Republican Party,” he said.

Wary of standing with the Republican Party proper, DeAnna is less sanguine than Lockwood about 2012. Citing Bill Clinton’s success in 1996, after the 1994 conservative landslide, DeAnna is somewhat skeptical of the optimism some have about 2012.

“Don’t get overconfident,” DeAnna said.

Conor Skelding is a day editor for the Bwog at Columbia University. He is a member of the Student Free Press Association.

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