The Future of the Republican Party

A couple of progressives went undercover at a College Republicans (CR) convention and consumed a lot of beer. In the middle of a rollicking waste of time (theirs, unless someone was paying them for this; yours, if you read the whole blog they produced), though, was a description of the rising leader of the party's youth:

Yikes... Chairman-elect Paul Gourley seemed pretty tame today at the convention, but is no stranger to tricky politics.

He trains how rig mock elections at the Leadership Institute and raised millions of dollars for CR using sketchy, misleading and sometimes just outright lies to coerce people into believing they were giving to the real GOP or even President Bush. This particularly targeted senior citizens in their 80's and 90's, and most of the money didn't even go to organizing, but direct mailing. Apparently the questioning of such tactics (with Gourley's signature) was off limits, and according to 21-year-old Tom Jardon, chairman of Florida's College Republicans, "It's that kind of thing where if you ask a question, somehow you are labeled a Democrat, which in Republican circles is the ninth circle of hell." (LA Times, June 22, 2005 by Robin Abcarian)

Unfortunately, he's also an accomplished grassroots organizer and has had great success in South Dakota on his campus and beyond expanding the CR network, building new groups and making it a stand-out state during the election. Besides the CR, he's also active in Campus Crusade for Christ and student government.

Karl Rove, Jr.....