Millennial Blogger Shares Her Advice for the Young Conservative Movement
Rachel del Guidice /
Allie Stuckey, host of “Allie” on CRTV and “Relatable” podcast, and a blogger at TheConservativeMillennialBlog.Com, spoke with The Daily Signal earlier in June during the Young Women’s Leadership Summit in Dallas, Texas.
Stuckey spoke following her speech about how she built her platform, TheConservativeMillennialBlog.Com, and how it led her to work in conservative media, the strengths and weaknesses of the current young conservative movement, her take on the mainstream media’s treatment of women in the Trump administration, as well as her advice to young conservatives working to build their own platform. The transcript of the on-camera interview has been lightly edited for style and clarity.
Rachel del Guidice: What led you to build The Conservative Millennial? What was that like, what was behind it, and what have you done with it?
Allie Stuckey: So it was about a couple of years ago during the primaries that I actually had just quit one job and was about to start a new job. In my downtime, I decided that I was going to start a blog called The Conservative Millennial, and I had actually started it because I began speaking on college campuses just for free. Talking to them about the importance of voting in the primaries, not from a conservative perspective, just in general. Then I realized how on college campuses there were just so few people that had conservative principles, even where I was in Athens, Georgia.
So I started this blog called The Conservative Millennial. I would create flowcharts and blog posts about what was going on in the primaries, things about the debates and things like that, and then I started making videos.
After a few months of making videos, it kind of just blew up and it got popular. We ended up moving to Dallas, we lived in Athens at the time, but we moved to Dallas. I ended up getting a job at TheBlaze and then I now work for CRTV, and then somewhere in there started being a guest on TV—Fox, Fox Business, things like that. So now I speak pretty frequently and do media and still write on the blog when I can. Yeah, it’s great.
del Guidice: So you visit college campuses all the time, talk to students all the time. What are some of the biggest strengths and weaknesses you see in the young conservative movement today?
Stuckey: I think probably the biggest strength that we have is that we do have platforms like Turning Point USA and other organizations that are giving us a voice. And that people are actually talking about the issues on college campuses of discrimination against Christians and conservatives … free speech, freedom of religion, and things like that, no matter what your ideology is, I think that’s our strength that we’re actually talking about those things, that we’re brave enough to talk about them and bring them to light. That we’re making news cycles constantly it seems like.
Our weakness is that sometimes all that we focus on is scoring points and getting in the news cycle, rather than actually caring about people. That’s a little bit about what I worry about for the longevity of our movement, I think it’s great to win arguments, but you have to win people’s hearts in order for it to actually last.
I just want to make sure that the heart of our movement is still people, empowering people through individual responsibility, and showing them why the free market works, why conservative principles work, but not just as an idea, but actually for people. For everyone.
del Guidice: On that note, where are some policy issues, or what’s one that you think young conservatives should drill down on more, get familiar with, and know more?
Stuckey: Well, recently, I was talking to someone who is … he is really an advocate for the environment, which is not something that I’ve particularly been a voice for, it’s just not something that I know a lot about. But, he is taking free-market policies, or free-market ideas, in order to help the environment. I actually think that’s a really good way to reach across the aisle.
They always call us, the left calls us the “Anti-Science Party,” when really that’s not really true. I mean, we’re the ones that believe in life inside the womb, we’re the ones that believe in the fact that scientifically there are two genders, we believe in science in so many realms.
But, if we could just get on board, I think, with the environment, then we could really be the party of science in general. That doesn’t mean big government policies to fix the environment, it means in the private sector. I actually think that that could be a really good issue, even though I’m not particularly passionate about it, I think it would be a good issue to reach across the aisle and to bring some people over.
del Guidice: You mentioned you’re on Fox, Fox Business all the time. What do you take, and what do you make of the media’s coverage of the Trump administration and the women? Especially in the administration, we’ve seen women rise to amazing [ranks], break glass ceilings like Gina Haspel, the new CIA director. What do you think of the media’s coverage of these women and do you think that there’s some double standards there?
Stuckey: Yeah, it’s absolutely a double standard because we were told that the reason that I didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton was because I was a sexist and I didn’t want to see a woman become president. Now when women within the Trump administration are rising to the top and the other side criticizes them, well, it’s not because they’re sexist, it’s because they have legitimate criticism. But when we criticize someone from their side, we don’t have legitimate [criticisms], so there is a double standard.
Either you are for all women the way that you say that you are, or you’re not. And quite frankly, I think it’s okay for them to criticize Sarah Sanders and Gina Haspel, if they want to, sure, that’s fine. But you have to be okay when I do it too. Don’t call me a sexist just because I criticize a woman on your side.
del Guidice: Final question. What advice would you give to young people who want to build a platform for themselves, who want to be activists in their schools and communities? You’ve done it yourself, what’s the advice that you have?
Stuckey: I would say first, don’t be afraid to work on the ground. I think a lot of us, and I say this as someone who built a platform on the internet, but that’s not the most important thing, that’s sometimes not the most effective way of reaching people. Sometimes the most effective way is to actually just get involved in your College Republicans on campus, or get involved with an issue that really matters to you.
Go volunteer at a mobile sonogram unit that is convincing young women to keep their baby, rather than abort them. Sometimes that makes a bigger hands-on difference than just tweeting about something. Now, I think that’s great as well, I obviously do it, I am an internet personality, but don’t deny the grudge work just because it’s not glamorous, that’s actually where the real change is made, in my opinion.
del Guidice: Allie, thank you so much for joining us today.
Stuckey: Thank you.