My TAC colleague Craig Holland Dixon says that Republicans are blowing a good opportunity to connect with unemployed and underemployed Millennials:

For the most part, I sympathize with the Occupy movements sprouting up around the country — not their aims, but their grievances. The Occupiers are correctly identifying the symptoms, but the majority of young people out there are too uneducated about economics to correctly diagnose the actual problem — corporatism, not capitalism.

The GOP is missing a golden opportunity to champion a cause that will only become louder as we go deeper into the 2012 election cycle.

More:

[C]onsider a recent statement of Herman Cain’s to the Wall Street Journal on the Occupy movement: “Don’t blame Wall Street, don’t blame the big banks, if you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself! […] It is not someone’s fault if they succeeded, it is someone’s fault if they failed.” Statements like Cain’s aren’t winning the GOP more young voters.

One of Craig’s readers writes that Republicans are on thin ice by pushing for austerity cuts in this environment:

Again, I’m speaking as an average, middle-of-the-road, used-to-be-solid-Republican-but-now-they-are-scaring-me. And if it scares me, and I LIKE Pat Buchanan, things like making fun of the protesters or supporting Cain are not going to help change anything.

I see Craig’s point, but I don’t see how the GOP (at least today’s GOP) has anything to say to those voters — if they vote at all. I predict their disillusionment with Obama will make them stay home on Election Day. What on earth do the Republicans have to tell them? Serious question. What do you readers think the GOP could say to young voters to win them over in 2012?