At 6 p.m. Eastern tonight, the House GOP’s “young guns” will hold a town hall at Facebook headquarters. (You can watch it here.) Before he flew to Palo Alto, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the Republican whip, spoke with National Review Online about the event.
The young guns’ stop, he notes, is one of many that leading Republicans have made in the tech mecca. Speaker John Boehner trekked to the region in May to woo executives. Cantor recently spoke at the Hoover Institution at Stanford and led an economic roundtable. McCarthy, a California representative, is a frequent visitor.
For the moment, McCarthy says, Obama remains popular in the deep-blue valley, but he’s no Mark Zuckerberg. The president has lingering buzz, but his long-term hold on area voters, and especially tech brass, is uncertain. After months of private talks with business leaders within key Silicon Valley blocs, McCarthy says Obama’s economic policies have created a real opening for Republicans to offer an alternative.
Read the rest here.