A GATHERING OF YOUNG CONSERVATIVES

Former Reagan Ranch Is Site of Annual Retreat for Politically Active Students

By Krissah Williams
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 18, 2007; Page A04

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — Up the winding mountain road, Rachel Coolidge pressed her digital camera to the window of the van she shared with other young conservatives, snapping pictures of the rough countryside loved by her hero, Ronald Reagan.

The van’s radio blasted one of the many right-wing radio talk shows that have become the soundtrack of her 21-year-old life, and when she reached Rancho del Cielo, once Reagan’s vacation retreat, Coolidge was almost giddy.

“Ronald Reagan is a huge inspiration,” she said, standing on the 688-acre homestead where he famously cleared brush and rode horse trails when he escaped from Washington and the White House. “Amazing.”

The 40th president is her definition of an ideal conservative leader: He lowered taxes, opposed abortion rights, fought communism. He’s everything that this president of the College Republicans of the University of Houston wants the contenders for the Republican nomination to embody.

But, unlike Reagan, “none of them are perfect,” she said.

Coolidge and the other 20-somethings on the trip are forging their political views in a world in which there is no living ideal, and the tenuous bonds of the conservative movement in which they were raised are fraying. They are adrift with no favorite candidate, so they turn back to the past for the ideals none in the current field fully possesses. In a sense, they are outliers themselves, marginalized on their liberal campuses. Sponsored by the nonprofit Young America’s Foundation at what Reagan called his “open cathedral,” this annual retreat for young conservatives is their haven.

Coolidge, wearing flip-flops and round movie-star sunglasses, came here with 39 other handpicked young activists. They would later be joined in a resort hotel nearby by 360 other Republican students from 118 universities and a few high schools for a kind of conservative boot camp designed to cement their beliefs.

Over the next couple of days, they all heard former attorney general John D. Ashcroft say to them that “the three things you find in the middle of the road are yellow lines, dead skunks and moderates.” They bought books from Nonie Darwish, the controversial author of “Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror.” Movie night featured a screening of “Rediscovering God in America,” narrated by Newt and Callista Gingrich.

At the retreat, they found solidarity in their ongoing battle against liberals and big government, leaving reaffirmed in their principles but dispassionate about the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Mostly, they learned about the era that older conservatives have come to call their glory days: the Reagan administration.

Back home, away from the Reagan ranch and the retreat, things are more complicated. Some religious conservatives have threatened to bolt if the Republican Party’s opposition to abortion diminishes. Fiscal conservatives are incensed by the growth in government spending under President Bush and scorn the idea of “compassionate conservatism.” They all worry about the menace of global terrorism.

What’s a young conservative to think amid all the angst? The Republican presidential contest is as wide open as it has ever been in their lifetimes, and none of the students is excited about any living politician.

“They are somewhat like so many other, more senior conservatives — a little disillusioned right now,” said Lee Edwards, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation. “To quote Reagan: ‘What we need is a party of bold colors, not pale pastels.’ Young people love bold colors, God bless them.”

Nationally, young Republicans are pretty well divided. According to a Pew Research Center survey conducted at the end of last month, 37 percent of Republicans younger than 35 favor former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, 21 percent back Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), 13 percent support former senator Fred D. Thompson (Tenn.), 7 percent are for Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.) and 5 percent are for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. In a Washington Post survey this month, 40 percent of Republicans said they “strongly” support their candidate, compared with 51 percent of Democrats.

Each one of the candidates has a little piece of Reagan, said young conservative blogger Robert Bluey, but none has put the whole package together. That has made Reagan a specter hovering over the 2008 Republican race. In the first Republican debate, held in May at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., the candidates mentioned Reagan 19 times.

Coolidge’s love for Reagan and his no-apologies conservatism began at the age of 4 on Houston’s west side when she sat in the living room with her parents to watch a not-yet-bald Rush Limbaugh on television. She recently grew nostalgic for those early Limbaugh episodes, and just as others her age watch old episodes of “Full House,” she searched and found his early 1990s bashing of Bill Clinton on YouTube and viewed them again.

She admires Ann Coulter’s say-anything, politically incorrect liberal bashing. Before she became a published author, Coulter was sent out on a speaking tour by Young America’s Foundation to promote her brash brand of conservatism. Her latest book is titled “If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans.”

“She’s a strong woman, and she’s incredibly intelligent,” Coolidge said of Coulter, whom Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) has called vicious and mean-spirited. “She isn’t scared of anyone, and she says what she wants to say.”

Ron Robinson, who worked as an adviser to the Education Department during the Reagan administration, is president of Young America’s Foundation. He orchestrated its purchase of the Reagan ranch from Nancy Reagan in 1998 for an estimated $5 million. He says he wants students to leave his programs understanding that “they are not going to get a complete education from their schools.”

To help change that, foundation staffers gave Coolidge a “Campus Conservative Battleplan” that they produce each academic year. It lays out a month-by-month plan to aggressively advance their ideas. This month, she held “Freedom Week,” as suggested, to highlight “how Reagan defeated communism” and to show support for the military and ROTC. She put up posters that the foundation sent her and hundreds of other campus activists to celebrate the 18th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall on Nov. 9. The posters said: “Reject oppressive socialist ideas. Embrace freedom.”

Over beer and sodas after a day of sessions capped by Dinesh D’Souza’s lecture on how to oppose atheists on campus, Coolidge and her friends swapped campus stories. Many of them were about Daniel Lipian, chairman of the College Republicans at Bowling Green State University, regarded by his fellow students as something of a rock star.

Among his accomplishments: He placed 3,000 U.S. flags on his campus during a never-forget vigil in honor of the Sept. 11 victims. Last year, with help from the Young America’s Foundation, his club raised $20,000 to bring rock guitarist and gun rights activist Ted Nugent to Bowling Green. When Lipian wanted to spark a debate about immigration, he and other College Republicans club members put up a fence in the plaza and hosted a “Catch an Illegal Immigrant Day.” On one side of the fence, he kept out club members wearing T-shirts that said “Illegal Immigrant.”

“We were attacked over and over again by the left,” he said.

It’s the kind of bold energy that can infuse a presidential candidacy, but during the question-and-answer portion of the retreat sessions, only one candidate’s name came up, and it belonged to a Democrat.

Ryan Bilodeau, 22, who chairs the Young Republicans in Rhode Island, asked the panelists who spoke on “Why I became a young conservative activist” how he could launch a protest against Clinton, who he said travels to Rhode Island for private fundraisers.

Find out from the police what the regulations are for holding a protest, Seattle talk radio host Kirby Wilbur suggested. Then write signs, making fun of her on-again, off-again support for driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, he added. (Clinton has since said emphatically that she does not think they should get licenses.)

“Even if you have only 10 people out there, it will get in her head,” said Wilbur, who led thousands in a headline-grabbing Seattle protest against Clinton’s health-care plan in the 1990s. “She will remember you.”

Polling analyst Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.