If you talk to college students about making conservatism “cool,” as the Daily Signal did, this apparently is what you get:

This past weekend, the Republican National Committee sent its chairman, Reince Priebus, to North Carolina to rally college voters, a demographic historically elusive to the GOP. The hope is the effort could make a difference in the state’s competitive U.S. Senate race.

Some 30 or so college students, most representing NC State, walked across the street to attend a Saturday rally at state party headquarters in Raleigh.

In the interest of getting less-biased data, The Daily Signal spoke later that night to young adults who didn’t attend the rally. …

‘How You Frame the Message’

Matthew Cobb identifies as “very conservative.”

Cobb, a senior political science major from Goldsboro, N.C., labels most college students in his public policy class as “Marxist leftists.”

Yet Cobb has a problem with the Republican Party.

“I feel like most people agree with conservative values, but don’t like the conservative brand,” Cobb says.

Cobb, eating with his hometown friends at the Chipotle on Hillsborough Street—the main artery running through the NC State campus—says Republicans have let Democrats position the GOP as out of touch and uncool to millennial voters.

Larry Sampson, also a senior from Goldsboro, shares his friend’s views.

“It’s a matter of how you frame the message,” Sampson says. “Republicans don’t do enough to combat the negative image. There’s a perception that Republicans are racist, and they just take it. They need to be on the attack more.”

‘Need to Go Out and Argue’

Sampson, who is black, says that for Republicans to control their message, they must be visible on issues and with communities that they normally wouldn’t confront.

He admires the work of Sen. Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican, who has courted black Americans.

Paul recently met with black leaders in Ferguson, Mo., which dominated headlines over the summer after a white police officer shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was black.

Paul has endorsed an overhaul of the nation’s criminal justice system that he hopes would make it easier for nonviolent criminals to reintegrate into society.

“Republicans are scared of confrontation,” Sampson says. “The only way to change someone’s mind is to say, ‘Look, here is what I am offering.’ Sometimes you just need to go out and argue with people.”

Sampson and his friends say the easiest perception Republicans can control is how “cool” they are.

Justin Walker, a recent college graduate, works as a mechanic. He says being cool has become the biggest selling point for Democrats to young voters.

“A lot of their information is not true, but they are cool,” explains Walker, who identifies as an independent libertarian.

Republicans just need to try harder, Sampson says.

“They need to hire a style guru,” he says. “You see conservatives show up to public events in tri-cornered hats. We get it, we’re conservative. But we need to be the most stylish people at the table.”

‘A Way to Be Pragmatic’

Many of those interviewed come from conservative families that instilled traditional values. But some say Republicans must be flexible on certain issues, to match changes in society.

Same-sex marriage and abortion are the two touchiest subjects for these conservative students.

Court rulings overturning current state laws have made same-sex marriage, at least for now, legal in the majority of states.

“The government should get out of the marriage business,” Sampson says. “If a church lets you get married, that’s the church’s business. With social issues, there’s a way to be pragmatic about it–to make sure everyone is respected.”

Justin Baird, an NC State freshman from Garner, volunteers at GOP events. He comes from a conservative background and says he plans to vote for Tillis “because he matches my views.”

But those views are related to the economy, not social issues.

“I am more concerned with economic issues,” Baird says. “A candidate’s views on social issues wouldn’t impact my vote as much.”

David and Jennifer Curley, siblings from Charlotte, say they vote based on the completeness of a candidate’s conservatism.

“I support conservatives on economic and social issues,” says David Curley, a junior who voted for Mitt Romney for president in 2012 and will support Tillis on Nov. 4.

‘Spending Less Money Is Good’

Just like most Americans, students worry most about what’s closest to home: the economy.

Jerry Jones, a recent college graduate, is the most reserved in the group of friends eating at Chipotle.

He has a degree, but he frets about his job prospects.

“I’m concerned about the economy,” says Jones, who votes independently and is undecided about the Tillis-Hagan race. “There’s too much government regulations and not enough job creation.”

Walker, the independent libertarian and Jones’s friend, says he thinks Republicans fall on the correct side of the economic debate.

Republicans just don’t do a good enough job of communicating their message, Walker says, because they’re too busy playing defense on other issues.

“Republicans need to do a better job of selling the economic aspect to young people,” Walker says. “Because most people in general believe spending less money is good.”

This piece makes one of those skeptical expressions break out over my face. For one thing, college students have the historically worst percentage of voter turnout. Frankly, people in the generation older than them — people with children, homes and retirement investments — aren’t always very happy to live in the same place with helicopter voters, college students who vote in elections and then blow out of town, leaving the mess their votes caused for others to clean up.

The issue that politicians have tried to bring up to get the new-voter vote is the cost of college and student debt. Democrats claim the issue is the fault of not sending enough government money to colleges and students. Republicans claim the problem is the fault of colleges spending too much money, particularly on things that are not really about most people’s understanding of education, such as fancy dormitories and student recreational and athletic facilities. Colleges in turn claim they’re building buildings because they have to to attract new students in an area of a diminishing student-age population.

That issue nicely sums up the liberal-vs.-conservative divide. Liberals say: More money! Conservatives say: Spend less. Which sounds more fun? The liberal point of view, of course, particularly because it involves spending money from somewhere else besides you.

The minimum wage is another issue, since most minimum-wage workers are high school and college students. Everyone wants more money from their employer. Few people think about the implications of raising wages 40 to 100 percent more than an employee is worth to his or her employer, such as 40 to 100 percent higher unemployment among the high school- and college-age population.

This is where someone writing on this subject is obligated to repeat the statement attributed to Winston Churchill that if you’re not a liberal at 20 you have no heart, but if you’re not a conservative when you’re 30 (or 40 depending on your quote provider) you have no brain. Being liberal will always be more fun-sounding than being conservative, until you survey the wreckage of a couple of generations of the liberal mindset bringing us such non-fun things as multiple generations of families on welfare and government sucking the life out of the economy, and as a result your not having the opportunities your parents had.

Back to that “cool” thing: At the risk of equating life with high school, being “cool” isn’t something you can wake up one day and become. A childhood of wanting to be cool, and never being cool, taught me that either you’re cool, or you’re not, and once you’re out of high school no one cares, and should care, about being cool or popular. Except, of course, politicians, whose continued sucking of the tax dollar — I mean, continuing to serve in public office — depends on being more popular then their opponent.

One issue that plagues conservatives in their struggle for coolness is that being a conservative requires frequent use of one word whose letters are found in the word “conservative” — the word “no.” No, you can’t spend more money than you have, or can generate. No, spending more money on something does not make it automatically better. No, giving minimum-wage employees a pay increase they haven’t earned through better work is not going to make the economy better. No, you should not be able to ingest whatever controlled substance you feel like using. No, the world is not a nice place filled with good people who only have good intentions.

This is why in every workplace the least popular employee is the person whose job involves the word “no.” That can be the boss, that can be a person underneath the boss who has the “no” role (I’ve worked for that person), or that can be someone in the business office or who has accounting responsibilities.

Remember Chris Matthews’ observation a decade ago that the Republican Party is the “daddy party” and the Democratic Party is the “mommy party.” Conservatism is about tradition and values of long standing. New things are usually more cool than old, until you realize that new is not necessarily better, and change may be inevitable, but positive change is not.

Parents know that children need limits, though they do not generally want limits. No one likes to be told they cannot do something, or have to do something they don’t want to do. That, however, is reality. It’s hard for me to grasp how that fact is ever going to become popular or cool.

A lot of what attracts people to politics is not the issues, but the person on top. Baby Boomers had John F. Kennedy. My generation had Ronald Reagan. The generation that followed may have been motivated by Bill Clinton, and young Democrats today have Barack Obama. (Which helps explain how screwed up our country is.)

Here’s another one of those uncool facts: The biggest flaw of Wisconsin’s “Progressive Movement” then and the liberal ethos today is that they seek to change human nature, which is immutable. Good and evil exist both in the world and in all of us. That’s why human beings need law and people to enforce it, as well of rules of society. Personal freedom sounds great until someone else’s personal freedom infringes on yours, or, for that matter, collective expressions of personal freedom cause real damage to society. As has been said numerous times before now, the facts of life are fundamentally conservative.

You may have noticed in the Daily Signal piece the divide between conservatives and “conservatarians,” who are conservative on economic issues and libertarian on social issues. This isn’t just a problem attracting young people to vote Republican; it’s a problem attracting people, period, to vote Republican. The younger you are, the more likely you are to know, for instance, people who smoke marijuana without it controlling their lives, or people in same-sex relationships, or women who have had abortions.

No one has a good handle on how to get past that issue, because at the heart of every political philosophy not named “libertarian” and, for that matter, every religion (and parenthood too) is the desire to control other people’s behavior. I think Republicans need to find the common ground of economic conservatism, because all Republicans (except Dale Schultz) agree on that issue. To me, the issues that are important to social conservatives are really not things about which government can do much; you have to change the culture to, for instance, reduce the number of abortions.

Improving communication, however, is always worthwhile, because communication is never as good as it should be. The downside of conservatives and Republicans migrating to Rush Limbaugh and Fox News is that listening to your own views diminishes your ability to counter the bad, illogical yet heartfelt arguments of Democrats and liberals. (I’d argue the converse as well with liberals and MSNBC, but why help them out?) Besides the cause of self-promotion, I agree to appear on Wisconsin Public Radio’s Friday Week in Review (including tomorrow at 8 a.m.), even though I am positive that most listeners disagree with me, because the views of non-liberals and non-Madisonians need to be heard.

The first thing you have to do to reach college-age people, speaking from my experience of having been one myself, is to not be condescending. (The second verse of Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It” begins with “Oh, you’re so condescending …”) Conservative arguments should rely on facts and logic, particularly when trying to engage the brains of people whose brains are being engaged sitting in a classroom every weekday.

It also depends a great deal on the messenger. Reagan was a great messenger of the conservative message, even though he was old enough to be our grandfather. Optimism always convinces more than pessimism, even though a pessimistic worldview avoids disappointment. The age of college is the last chance we have to be idealistic before the real world hits after graduation, and candidates and causes need to appeal to that, while following the high school advice: “be yourself.”