Aaron Schock

Aaron Schock -- Meghan McCain crushing on hottie congressman

By Jake on

Aaron Schock is better looking that most politicians, which, to be fair, is not the hardest thing to do.
Meghan McCain stopped just short of saying she puts up Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL) posters in her locker, but just barely.

In an article at The Daily Beast, the 24-year-old gushes about the hunky 27-year-old Congressman, saying his youth is a serious asset.

From The Daily Beast:
The first time I ever heard of Congressman Aaron Schock, I was hanging out with some friends during a girls' night in, and one of my friends yelled to me from the other room: “Meghan, there’s a congressman on TMZ.” To which I answered: “Twenty bucks he’s a Democrat.” Well, I was wrong. Schock is not only a Republican, but currently fills the congressional district in Illinois that Abraham Lincoln once held. (This winter, Huffington Post readers elected him “Hottest Freshman,” garnering him an appearance on the Today show. A couple of weeks later, TMZ started stalking Schock.) In the era of President Obama pop-culture mania, how is one conservative young congressman becoming the Republican Party’s very own pop-culture politician—and someone even my most liberal friends in West Hollywood are asking me about?

It’s no coincidence the congressman-turned-TMZ hottie is the first congressman born in the 1980s; he’s a member of my own Generation Y. Schock is 27 years old and has been in politics since he was elected to the Peoria school board at age 19—making him the youngest person to ever serve on a school board in Illinois. “Ultimately, [running for school board] led me into the public service, feeling like I could make a difference and help improve my community,” Schock told me by phone last week. Four years later, he was elected to the state house; four years after that, he was elected to Congress.
Schock’s rapid rise to the national level is, if nothing else, interesting, especially given the serious soul-searching the Republican Party is experiencing. My father, had he won, would have been the oldest president in history elected to a first term. He was often criticized because of the generational gap between him and young voters. Schock should play his youth to his advantage, and so should the GOP. In a party stereotyped as one for old, white men, Schock has made a marked impression on my generation’s zeitgeist—even if it was unintentional.

But the most promising thing about the young congressman is his dual understanding of old-school conservative ideals and the GOP’s branding problem, if you will. When I asked him if he thought people like me (meaning more moderate Republicans) had a place in the party, Schock actually gave me an answer an average person could understand. “In order for us to be a majority party,” he said, “we need to be everywhere, with every demographic and every region of the country. We have to recognize Republican candidates in the Northeast are going to be different than candidates in the Midwest, who are going to look different than candidates on the West Coast. We have to first recognize the fundamental role of any representative, to represent his constituents, not a particular party. That doesn’t mean you take the party platform necessarily and throw it out the window, but also that you don’t become so exclusive to say ‘Well if this person doesn’t agree with me 100 percent, then they aren’t a true Republican.’” Unlike the response so many older Republicans have given me before—I’m young, I spent time at college in Manhattan, etc.—Schock approached the question honestly and realistically. Just the fact that he recognizes the problem the GOP has reaching out to my generation is in itself impressive.