A Gathering of Young Conservatives

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.

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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.