Is Alex Schriver the man who will win back the youth for the GOP?

WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 10: Attendees give a standing ovation to Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney as he delivers remarks to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Marriott Wardman Park February 10, 2012 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

“So there’s a myth that exists — there’s an adage out there that when you’re young if you vote conservative you don’t have a heart, if you’re old and you vote liberal you don’t have a brain,” College Republican chieftain Alex Schriver told The Daily Caller sitting in a chair in his Capitol Hill office when asked why we should want young people to vote considering the young are often moronic.

“And that is simply not true. Republicans have won the youth vote four times since 1972.”

“They’re not idiots,” Schriver protested, when TheDC pressed the point. “They’re educated voters.”

Agree or disagree, the 23-year-old was ably doing his job, flacking for the importance of the youth vote because he is charged with helping mobilize the young in support of Republicans this fall. And it is a job he takes seriously.

Schriver, who was elected chair of the College Republican National Committee last summer and will serve until 2013, lived a somewhat nomadic childhood, living in California, Washington State, Georgia and Tennessee, where he graduated from high school in 2006. His family owned a chemical company that depended on paper mills.

“Anywhere there’s a paper mill I’ve probably lived,” Schriver quipped.

Schriver says his parents aren’t particularly political and that it was the 9/11 terrorist attacks that compelled him to develop a more serious interest in politics. As a high-schooler in 2004, he volunteered for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign.

“I had the ‘Flush the Johns’ bumper sticker and the ‘Kerry flip flop’ bumper sticker. That really solidified I think my passion for campaigns,” he said.

At Auburn University his passion for politics deepened. He involved himself in several political races and interned for the CRNC. After working as for a political consulting firm briefly after graduating in 2010, he decided to make a run for the office he now holds.

He decided to run, he explained, because he believes the youth vote is critical and he wanted to help to win it back for the GOP (which is also probably why he doesn’t so easily agree that young people are too often idiots).

But deep down, it is hard not to believe that the real reason someone runs for such an office is because they have long-term political ambitions of their own.

“My focus right now is on the term that I have, you know, getting to November,” he said, giving TheDC the run-around when asked what he wants to do when his term is up and if he wants to be governor one day of his adopted home state, Alabama.

“I’m not necessarily too concerned with what I want to do next. I have a passion for Alabama. I would love to go back there and make a difference in some capacity. What that necessarily is I don’t know. But I can see myself returning to Alabama when this is up.”

A long chain of former CRNC chairmen and executive directors have gone on to do big things in the political arena. Indeed, Schriver lists many of the most notable names in his bio for Politico, where he writes occasionally. From Karl Rove to Grover Norquist, Schriver says he keeps in contact with many of them.

“I’ll tell you one of the most interesting things about my conversations with them is they will always ask how is being a College Republican different from being a College Republican in the ‘70s or ‘80s, how do you recruit members and how is that different?” he said.

“I always tell them that in 2012 being a College Republican may mean the same thing, it’s just a little different. So we still set up a table on campus and recruit members, but instead of signing them up on clipboards, we’re signing them up on iPads.”

NEXT: Has Schriver sought advice from former CRNC chair Jack Abramoff?