Making Their Mark

“The Republicans have no business winning this election,” says Colin J. Motley ’10. An unlikely statement, perhaps, considering that he is president of the Harvard Republican Club and currently on his way to New Hampshire to campaign for John McCain. But on this day, Motley’s words ring especially true: his candidate is trailing in nearly every national poll, the Republican vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, has been involved in a number of embarrassing gaffes, and Christopher Buckley, the son of conservative icon William F. Buckley, recently announced his endorsement of McCain’s rival, Democrat Barack Obama.

But none of this seems to have dampened Motley’s spirits as he energetically announces our arrival in Manchester, N.H. If ever there were a group of people that exhibits hope, it’s Motley and his Harvard Republicans. As members of the College’s tiny political minority, they are all too familiar with the underdog status of their candidate’s campaign.

Situated in a historic former mill, McCain’s New England headquarters are spartan but lively. As the HRC members exit their yellow school bus and make their way through the building’s varnished hardwood halls, they exhibit a determined brand of optimism that is characteristic of those who toil in the labor of love. They’ll spend the day trekking door-to-door to the homes of mostly elderly undecideded voters, hoping to mobilize the more conservative ones to come out in favor of McCain.

“McCain needs all the elderly voters he can get,” Brenda C. Maldonado ’10 says. “Obama’s got the youth on lock.”

Maldonado would know. As co-chair of the Massachusetts chapter of Youth for McCain, she offers one of many testimonials to the unpopularity of her party on campus. Harvard Republicans are consistently outnumbered during their undergraduate careers, allowing them to develop a keen sense of their opposition.

“Being faced by constant adversity improves us as arguers for our ideas,” Motley says. “I think that is undeniable.”

Even one of their opponents agrees.

“Republicans coming out of Harvard are better equipped, then, to see the other side,” says Jarret A. Zafran ‘09, the president of the Harvard College Democrats. “The average Republican that comes out of the Ivy League is better able to anticipate the rebuttal to their point in advance.”

Faced with a campus that dismisses conservatism and a historic election that has galvanized students, the HRC is, by necessity, forging a new brand of Republicanism at Harvard. Capitalizing on extensive knowledge of the campus’ liberal majority, the club’s members have been able to fine-tune their attempts to improve the accessibility of Republican ideals.

Having discarded the model of the “folksy firebrand” Republican in favor of a more academic image, HRC members now hope they have re-branded conservatism in a way Democrats will find more compelling in the times ahead.

“By taking a calmer, more directed approach we’ve been able to get our message across in a clear way that people actually listen to,” says HRC Vice President Alee Lockman ’10. “In the past couple of years we’ve really been trying to send a message that we’re Harvard students, we’re just as smart as our liberal counterparts—we just have different opinions.”

The destigmatization and intellectualization of Republicanism are not just tactics—they’re strategies, with the potential for enormous payoff. While working to improve its reputation on campus, the HRC has also been setting the tone for the way they hope Democrats and Republicans will interact for the next 20 years.

“I think that a lot of people, as they grow older, and as they start to pay taxes will start to see some of the issues in a different light,” Motley says. “We can contribute to making the Republican Party’s message and ideas more clear now and maybe help to accelerate that process.”

“We’re trying to articulate a case for Ivy League Republicanism,” says Brian J. Bolduc ’10, an HRC member and the editor of the Harvard Salient. “What the HRC has done is—they’re not conceding certain things to liberals. They’re just re-branding and presenting in a better fashion—one that will make you want to listen to them.”

If the strategy works, and their approach proves convincing, the future leadership of the Grand Old Party—and the country—could look a lot like the HRC does now.

‘IT’S NOT THAT I DON’T LIKE LIBERALS’

“It’s not that I don’t like liberals,” says Elizabeth C. Elrod ’11. “I just don’t like it when they talk about politics.”

Elrod, who joined the HRC this fall, is still processing the implications of her vote, including her feelings toward the controversial choice of Palin as McCain’s running mate. When I ask her to speak about Palin as we complete a round of canvassing earlier this month, Elrod responds with the same sassy confidence as the candidate she admires.

“Controversial?” she laughs. “I didn’t think it was controversial. I think she’s a great pick. She strikes me as a woman who knows what’s good for her people, and she’ll just do it. It just makes me want to fight harder for the Republican Party to make sure that what we want from our nation gets done.”

While they ultimately support her, Palin’s presence on the GOP ticket has complicated certain matters for Elrod and other female members of the HRC. Elrod says she would feel more conflicted about her positions if Hillary Clinton were still in the race and she says she has had to reconcile her pro-choice stance on abortion with Palin’s pro-life views.

“I have sort of put social issues behind,” she says.

Maldonado, who is also the HRC’s membership and publicity director, admits that Palin’s selection “makes my job a little bit tougher. If you’re here and a Republican, people are going to call you out on the whole Palin thing. People start challenging you and it does kind of bring out the fighting spirit in you and energizes you and make you a little bit more passionate about what she does.”

‘NOT A BUNCH OF CRAZY WACKOS’

When Jeffrey Kwong joined the HRC in the fall of 2005, he became the only non-white member of the group’s then overwhelmingly male majority. At the time the club was stagnating—overemphasizing polarizing hot-button issues to little effect.

“Things would cause a splash, The Crimson would report on it, and we’d all give ourselves a pat on the back and say, ‘We managed to screw with some liberals today,’” Kwong says. “But at the end of the day this wasn’t winning any support on campus. We were turning off people.”

As the club’s membership director, Kwong had overseen changes to the HRC constitution that tied the club’s mission more closely to promoting the national GOP platform. As president, he took a “big tent” approach to Republicanism, expanding women and minority outreach efforts and seeking publicity to promote his club’s more open-minded and mainstream message.

In the spring of 2007, Kwong published a scathing Crimson opinion piece distancing the HRC from what he termed the extreme right-wing views of the Harvard Salient, which he feared had given more accepting Republicans at Harvard a bad name. The editorial, entitled “The Salient is not the Right,” sent a clear message to students: the new HRC no longer supported divisive exhibitionism of a polarizing “vocal minority.”

Kwong calls the editorial “a turning point in our membership towards more of a results-oriented kind of image.”

“We’re not going to force Republicanism down the throats of everyone,” he says, “and while we’re not going to get the majority of campus to support the Republican party, we want to make a positive image in people’s minds that the Republican party are not a bunch of crazy wackos.”

At the end of his term, Kwong left the HRC with larger and more diverse membership, and an elevated campus profile. The next president would have to sustain this progress and put the club’s revitalized image to good use.

‘NOTHING WRONG WITH THE BASE’

In November 2007, Kwong handed leadership over to Caleb L. Weatherl ’10. A charismatic and passionate leader, Weatherl is regarded by current club members as one of the few Harvard students with legitimate aspirations to be president of the United States.

Under his leadership, the club continued to emphasize outreach and bipartisanship, collaborating with the Harvard Democrats to reform the College’s recognition of students in the Reserve Officer Training Corps.

But Weatherl also drew criticism when he brought Bush campaign strategist Karl Rove to campus. Undergraduate Democrats saw Rove’s appearance as pandering to the GOP’s anti-intellectual evangelical base, and a far cry from Kwong’s manifesto of tolerance and inclusion.

For the HRC, this raised an important question: How far to the middle would Harvard Republicans have to drift in order to successfully establish themselves as the New Right?

Not far at all, according to Weatherl. Rather than denying the implications of the event, Weatherl tried to strengthen the case for conservative intellectualism by responding with a firm non-apology.

“There’s nothing wrong with appealing to the base of the Republican Party,” says Weatherl, who lists pro-life policies, homeland security, and traditional family values as the keystones of the Republican platform. “I don’t think that that appeal to middle America is necessarily something that contrasts with intellectual debates. You can argue those issues that are important to the base in an intellectual way.”

Weatherl’s stance was reassuring to some campus conservatives who may have been turned off by Kwong’s attempts to refashion the HRC as a mainstream, big-tent organization.

In standing by his party and its platform, Weatherl sent a message that thoughtfully engaging with liberals on campus did not require Harvard Republicans to apologize for their beliefs. Whatever necessary changes in image the HRC undertook, their Republican ideology would remain intact.

After an eventful spring, Weatherl is taking this semester off to work for Rove in Washington, D.C. Motley, the HRC’s vice president of campaigns and activism, quietly replaced him, and returned in the fall to a campus saturated with election-related debate.

MOTLEY’S CREW

An unlikely yet natural leader, Motley is the first to admit that his fascination with the tax code approaches the “wonkish.” His deep knowledge of, and genuine excitement for, the election has helped him synthesize and extend the priorities of his predecessors. (The HRC’s executive board, once male-dominated, now enjoys a female majority.) Motley, a gracious diplomat in every social setting, also brings a much-needed sense of irony to his dealings with Harvard liberals.

After a debate against the Dems on Oct. 15, I ask Motley if he allows himself to question his political stances as much as he urges liberals to question theirs. He expresses a refreshingly open-minded opinion about the transient nature of belief.

“Maybe someday, I may have to change my beliefs if I’m confronted with something new,” he says, before quickly adding, “And someday, if you’re confronted with something new, you’ll have to change what you believe.”

In less than a month, both the national election and Motley’s unexpected turn as president will have come to an end. He and the HRC executive board have begun to plan for both of these eventualities, and while most HRC members balk at discussing the potential for their candidate’s loss next week, it’s a possibility all seem to have considered. (The club’s post-election after-party will have an appropriately flexible “celebrate the election/drown your sorrows” theme.)

Though they would obviously prefer a McCain victory, most HRC members still recognize the potential opportunities in his defeat. Ironically, an Obama win might ensure the GOP meltdown necessary for the HRC’s brand of Republicanism to catch on.

“There’s going to be a question in the Republican Party of, ‘where do we go from here?’” Motley says.

“There will be a major reawakening,” Kwong says. “We’ll have to reform. We’ll have to build new support.”

The success of the HRC’s scholarly strategy still relies on an ability to circumvent conflict with friendly conversation. I experienced this approach first-hand the first time I met Motley, over two years ago in Annenberg Hall. At the time, he was angling for a freshman position on the Undergraduate Council. I represented a potential constituent. We sat eating cereal and discussing Harvard’s same-gender rooming policy, on which we held opposing views. A nearby classmate, overhearing our debate, suggested that the longer Motley persisted with the conversation, the more likely he was to lose my vote.

“Better her vote than my morals,” Motley responded, smiling. He suggested that we change the topic.

In retrospect, the firm and respectful tenor of that first interaction bodes well for the future of the Republican Party once the architects of this Ivy League Republicanism finally take charge. Looking ahead, Lockman says that her generation of conservative intellectuals will soon be in a position to make their mark.

“You’re going to see these very strong-minded and strong-willed individuals coming out of Harvard who are frustrated with what they’ve seen in the party,” she says. “I think you’ll definitely see over the next 20 years a huge shift.”

“I don’t think the new Republicans are going to be very different ideologically,” says HRC member Andrew J. Crutchfield ’12, “but I do think that they’re going to be different in the way that they present their message and the way that they look.”

“The conservative intelligentsia are speaking up now about reforming the party on a national scale,” Bolduc says. “Republicans are going to have to think about ‘How do we win back people who work with their brains?’”

The members of the HRC have a head start on this challenge. After four years of defending their beliefs against ubiquitous Democrats, many Harvard Republicans will graduate with a honed ideological certitude and the superior political instincts to promote it at large.

“I think it’s a brilliant strategy on their part to just try to neutralize negative image,” Zafran says. “If they can lodge seeds of doubt in Democrat minds that maybe the Democratic ideology isn’t the only correct way to think, then they’ve done their job. That’s the type of outreach that’s going to win over people one person at a time.”

If all goes according to plan, by the time current Harvard Republicans enter the fray of national politics, the very same liberals who challenged them as undergraduates will have already joined their party. In 2036, current Harvard liberals may not only be responsible for the rhetorically-gifted HRC alumni on the ballot; we might be voting for them as well.

—Staff writer Nayeli E. Rodriguez can be reached at nrodrig@fas.harvard.edu.