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Notes -
Good to know, I suppose I hadn’t ever looked into it before. I’m just sort of surprised there isn’t more of an effort to collect and groom young talent into future leaders.
Why do you think the current setup is a good thing?
There definitely is, it's just funneled through more focused advocacy organizations, especially on the right. For the Republicans, there are basically two funnels through which young talent is nurtured.
The first is college organizations, both official college republican groups and independent groups like TPUSA, YAL, and YAF. These organizations connect conservative students with politicians and conservative NGOs via internships and leadership retreats and eventual job placements. The right has an extremely well organized system of internships (often paid--almost unheard of on the left) that it uses to maintain a pipeline of well-educated staffers since it can't simply rely on the universities to do it for them the way the left can. Unfortunately, if you're no longer in school this route is mostly blocked to you.
The second is professional organizations like the Federalist Society, Chamber of Commerce, various industry-based groups, which will often have "young X" chapters and events. These are usually more focused around networking, local political organizing, and fundraising, and aren't as actively dedicated to grooming the next generation of leaders, but are generally the sort of place aspiring Republican politicians should go if they want to gain access the actual informal party apparatus.
Despite the recent political realignment of Republicans becoming the party of the working class, it's still very much the case that grass roots Republican politics is centered around the country club, not the local party HQ.
^ Seconded and endorsed.
While the organizational center may have moved from the country club to the local steak house or climbing gym, the organizational structure and underlying principles have not changed.
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