O’Reilly On College Students: They Don’t Know Anything

The Article: Bill O’Reilly pans college GOP report by Katie Glueck in Politico.

The Text: ox News host Bill O’Reilly on Tuesday night got into a tussle with two spokeswomen for a college GOP report that outlines why Republicans lost the youth vote in November, asking why the party should “care about a bunch of kids who don’t know anything.”
“That sounds pretty immature, Ms. Smith,” O’Reilly told Alex Smith, the chair of the College Republican National Committee (CRNC), after asking why young people forgave President Barack Obama for the tough economy. “It doesn’t sound like a very objective analytical opinion, for want of a better word. So why should I care about this study, or why should the Republican Party care about a bunch of kids who don’t know anything, and they like the guy just because he’s flashy?…What message does that send to the GOP?”

“Well, to be quite frank, Bill, if the Republican Party really ignores younger voters, or continues to do so, we risk losing every national election in the future,” Smith retorted.

Her comments on Fox News’s “O’Reilly Factor” came a day after the CRNC released a highly critical assessment — first reported by POLITICO — of how the GOP stumbled with young voters, and outlined steps for improvement.

O’Reilly’s biting comment came after Kristen Soltis Anderson, the principal author of the 95-page report, said their research found that young people believed Obama was “trying” to improve the economy.

“I don’t know how you [win young voters] when economic issues on the Democratic side are dismal and younger voters don’t accept that as long as somebody is ‘trying,’” O’Reilly said.

When Smith said that the Republican Party must do a better job of reaching young voters — through the Internet, for example — O’Reilly rejoined, “so we have to have a Republican candidate who tweets?”

“You know what it comes down to, ladies?” O’Reilly concluded, interrupting Soltis Anderson, who was outlining why the GOP needs to better explain its problem-solving abilities in order to be competitive. “A charismatic candidate who can reach younger people and use words they understand. It comes down to personality. That’s what it comes down to.”