Written by Rachel Hoff on September 28, 2009

There’s a lot of talk these days about what the GOP can do to appeal to young voters. In the wake of Barack Obama’s 2-to-1 victory among voters under-30, the diagnosis seems to be that the Republican Party just isn’t “cool.” How can the GOP get our hip replacement? Everybody has their own answer… tweet more, redesign the RNC logo, move the Party to the center, take the Party back to true conservative principles – and the list goes on.

The simple truth is: there is no silver bullet solution to making the Republican Party “cool.” Sure, technology and branding and ideology are important, but they will not make or break a candidate or a Party’s ability to appeal to young people.

Unfortunately – or maybe, fortunately – winning our generation of voters is far more complex than having a great logo and running a candidate under the age of 50 who knows what Twitter is. (In fact, recent reports show the GOP may actually be better at Twitter, so it must be deeper than that.) If the Republican Party wants to win the hearts and minds of young voters, they must do three things: engage, empower, and deliver.

First, we have to engage young voters. Simply put, we have to ask. We need to show young Americans that we care about them and that we want their votes, despite what strategists will tell us about youth voter turnout, because we realize that our Party will be better just for having them in it. It’s the right thing to do, but it’s also about survival, because what we today refer to as “the youth vote” will soon be called simply “the American electorate.”

The next step is to empower. We cannot be the Party of top-down control and wait-your-turn politics. Instead, we should empower young people to make this Party their own. Frankly, the GOP doesn’t have a lot of other options right now. We hear all the time that we are a Party in the wilderness, searching for our next great leader. It’s time for us to stop complaining that the Republican Party needs a leader, and just be the leader the Republican Party needs.

As “hip” as Barack Obama may be, the real genius of his appeal to young people was not about him, it was about how he empowered them.

It was not simply about him as a leader, but that he empowered them to be leaders.

He told them, “Yes We Can.”

When we talk about new technologies, it’s on one level just about reaching young people where they are – online. But it’s also about empowerment. The power of Twitter is that it gives any individual with a computer, BlackBerry, or iPhone the ability to be a news breaker and a commentator.

But it’s not just about new media. The GOP needs old fashioned social networking – people sitting down with people over coffee or a beer sharing their own personal stories about why they are a Republican – to succeed. We need everyday “cool” young people to be willing to come out of the conservative closet. The rebirth of the Republican Party can happen at happy hours after work and in dining halls on college campuses around the country. But only if we speak up.

Finally, we must deliver. We have to be who we say we’re going to be. For whatever Barack Obama was or was not during the Presidential campaign, one thing was for sure – he was distinctly himself.

It is this kind of authenticity that young people crave. Young Americans are hungry for a party or a candidate that puts principle over politics. They thought they found that in Barack Obama. But who he was during the campaign and who he is as President have turned out to be two very different things. The candidate who promised to reach out to all Americans is now the President who’s doing politics as usual. During the campaign, Obama appeared to be authentic, but now it’s not so clear.

This has opened up a huge door for the GOP. Obama’s approval ratings fell among Americans of all ages this summer, but they dropped most dramatically among young voters. (According to Gallup, he fell 11 points from July to August among 18-29 year olds.) To take advantage of this opportunity, Republicans need to engage young Americans, empower them to lead, and deliver on our promises. Tweeting and going on late night talk shows may help, but to be cool to the core is much more complex. The good news is: the Democrats don’t really seem to have it figured out either.

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Rachel Hoff is a young Republican activist based in Washington, DC.