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Charlie Kirk Told Young Republicans To Speak Up Now They Politico

Bonisiwe Shabane
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charlie kirk told young republicans to speak up now they politico

POLITICO is the dominant source for politics and policy news around the world. Nobody knows politics like POLITICO. A generation of fledgling White House staffers and other young conservatives grew up on a steady social media diet of MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk, the same way an older guard did on radio commentator... Kirk’s life shaped their political views, and his influence is likely to have a profound effect on those steering the country, or who hope to, for decades to come. “He was the best of us,” said Nick Solheim, chief executive officer of the conservative personnel development organization American Moment. “Every young man who works in the White House had a story just like his, and they admired him for being a leader amongst our cohort.”

Solheim’s group has a symbiotic relationship with Kirk’s Turning Point USA and helped find recent graduates and 20-something conservatives fired up by Kirk their first Washington jobs, often in the White House or Trump... As a conservative student at left-leaning Boston University, Philip Wohltorf says he wasn’t always a big fan of Charlie Kirk. But he admired Mr. Kirk’s willingness to travel to college campuses and speak to his critics, as he was doing last Wednesday when he was fatally shot at Utah Valley University. “He was the guy who would sit down and just debate everyone,” he says. Mr.

Kirk’s boldness inspired other young conservatives to speak up, even when they faced social opprobrium, says Mr. Wohltorf, a junior and vice president of his College Republicans chapter. Now he feels “an obligation” to build on Mr. Kirk’s legacy by fostering open political debate on campus. “He started the movement, and you can’t get rid of this movement by taking out one guy,” he says. History shows the loss of a charismatic leader can propel a political movement into something even more powerful – or mark the beginning of its decline.

For now, Charlie Kirk’s allies are vowing to continue what he started. Where that movement goes next is an open question. Mr. Kirk founded Turning Point USA in 2012 as a student organization and built it into a conservative force multiplier, propelled by his online celebrity that made him a national political figure. His violent death, captured live and flashed across social media, sparked a tidal wave of angst and anger inside the White House and throughout President Donald Trump’s broader MAGA movement, of which Mr. Kirk was an unofficial leader – seen by some even as a potential heir to Mr.

Trump. That raises the stakes for what could be a contested battle to define Mr. Kirk’s legacy and shape the political movement he built. “I think this young base of voters, they’re grieving but they’re also pissed off,” a Republican strategist said. “And I do think this will carry over to the next election.” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson speaks during a memorial and prayer vigil for Charlie Kirk.

Rod Lamkey/AP The anguish and anger over Charlie Kirk’s assasination last week has galvanized young conservatives, tens of thousands of whom are pledging to become politically active and carry on Kirk’s message. Republican campaigns are ready to welcome them with open arms. Strategists say they are preparing for a surge of support among young conservatives ahead of next year’s midterm elections; support they hope can help win votes at the ballot box. For a party worried about turning out voters in 2026, enthusiasm from this group could become a major asset — and help Republicans overcome the political doldrums that traditionally afflict the sitting president’s party... Kirk energized young voters, and persuaded GOP leaders to buy into his vision.

Donald Trump won the 2024 election -- and the popular vote -- last November by turning out Republican voters and building a more diverse coalition than other Republican presidential candidates in years past. He also improved his performance with younger voters, a demographic Democrats have long dominated. That was thanks in large part to outreach on social media platforms and in communities targeted with the help of prominent personalities like Charlie Kirk. "We crushed the youth vote, even Democrats acknowledge it," Kirk said at an appearance this year at the Cambridge Union in the United Kingdom. "Both young men and young women moved to the right dramatically." John Della Volpe, director of polling at Harvard Kennedy School's Institute of Politics, who has studied young voters, said Kirk's organization's biggest success came with getting Trump and other GOP leaders to buy into...

Charlie Kirk told young Republicans to speak up. Now they run the White House. Politico Continued here: Charlie Kirk told young Republicans to speak up. Now they run the White House. - Politico

WASHINGTON—When Blake Neff first started working with Charlie Kirk in 2022, he doubted that the conservative activist’s message would land with its intended audience. “I was like, ‘Young people are all libs; this is just not going to work,’” Neff told The Epoch Times. Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk touts the rise in conservatism among Gen Z, pointing to the organization's recent Student Action Summit as evidence. Donald Trump did better with American young people last fall than any Republican candidate in decades. He won men under 30, won men of college age, and even won the youth vote in the swing state of Michigan. American young people were widely assumed to be uniformly liberal, and expected to remain so forever and ever.

But the reality was anything but. I saw this trend playing out in real time as I toured the country speaking on college campuses to crowds of three, four, and even five thousand strong. Young Americans were not happy with Joe Biden’s America or Kamala Harris' vows to continue it, and they were ready to return to the president they associated with a more prosperous pre-COVID time. It was a big win. But it was also impermanent. It could be a one-off.

It could easily be explained by the aftermath of COVID or the incredible political charisma of Donald Trump himself. The youth vote of 2024 wasn’t so much a win as it was an opportunity: A clear demonstration that conservatives actually can compete to win the votes of American young people, rather than writing... The challenge for Republicans now is seizing this Gen Z opportunity. Because Gen Z won’t become lifelong conservatives thanks to a good campaign or slick online memes. They’ll only become lifelong supporters if we’re able to deliver for them on the big issues that matter. Experts expend a lot of effort and ink explaining what Gen Z "wants." But between my campus visits and my work running Turning Point USA, I talk to as many Gen Z’ers as anyone...

They want basic economic success and security like the generations before them. They want a home, they want a family, they want to feel like they are building something and that they are a part of something. By ADRIANA GOMEZ LICON and BILL BARROW, Associated Press Charlie Kirk began plotting a way to mold young minds into conservatism at an age when he was still sorting out his own path. Looking to channel his political inclinations into action after a rejection from West Point, Kirk was 18 when he launched a grassroots organization from an Illinois garage that would grow alongside the rise of... Kirk admitted later he had “no money, no connections and no idea what I was doing” when he started Turning Point USA in 2012.

But his rhetorical gifts for countering progressive ideas by inflaming cultural tensions and making provocative declarations instantly resonated with college audiences during the Obama years and Trump’s first presidency. As video clips of his early campus appearances spread online, it helped him secure a steady stream of donations that transformed Turning Point into one of the country’s largest political organizations, attracting young people... “No one understood or had the heart of the youth in the United States of America better than Charlie,” Trump said on Wednesday after Kirk was assassinated while speaking at a college in Utah.

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