A senior staffer to 2016 presidential hopeful and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul says the Republican Party will self-destruct if it fails to engage the millennial generation this election cycle.

"It's a sad time to see that the party is not looking to expand," Cliff Maloney, who serves as National Youth Director for the Kentucky senator's campaign, said Wednesday at an event hosted by Politico in Washington, D.C.

"And if the party doesn't adapt, it's going to die," he added. "We've got to reach out to younger voters."

Maloney continued, "We've been to Berkeley [Calif.], we were in Waterloo, Iowa at a barbershop last week talking about criminal justice issues. These are ways to expand the party, but none of the other candidates seem to want to take the time to engage."

According to the aspiring teacher, President Obama's unprecedented outreach to young voters during the 2008 election cycle is a blueprint that Republican have yet to utilize — with the exception, Maloney says, of Paul.

"Democrats for years really understood the youth and it's astonishing to us — we look back at some of these [college] campus fairs and you have Bernie [Sanders] and Rand [Paul], and it's like, 'what are these folks doing?'" he said, claiming no other 2016 contenders have sought to reach college students like the two senators.

"I love it. There's no other Republican out there pushing some type of consistent or youthful message," he added. "We're building a culture and so many Republicans fail to understand you need to build an environment you want to be in."

Indeed, Paul routinely assures his skeptics that his efforts to reach college-age voters, particularly in the early voting state of Iowa, will pay off on Feb. 1, the day of the Iowa caucuses. In September, the libertarian senator's campaign announced its "300 in 30" initiative to establish Students for Rand chapters on 300 college campuses in one month.

"I want people to know that I'm a different kind of Republican. I can attract people from all walks of life, not just by believing the message we stand for, but by taking that message to places we haven't gone," Paul told the Washington Examiner in September.

Paul holds the No. 9 spot in the Examiner's latest presidential power rankings.