Losing The Future
One of the things that many people have noticed since the release of the Mount Vernon statement on Wednesday is the sharp contrast between the youth of the creators of the Sharon statement and the notable absence of students and young people from the latest gathering. Christopher Buckley quotes Sam Tanenhaus on this point, “The new/old submission seems more like Geriatrics Against Obama.” Fifty years ago, one could have written, as Nile Gardiner does today, that “conservatism is the future” with some reason for believing the claim to be true, and in the decades that followed there was a significant conservative political coalition that seemed to be growing in strength over time. Today it is increasingly difficult to believe anything of the kind.
Pew released a survey on Thursday showing that Millennials have soured a bit on Democrats in the last year. Despite this, they remain the one age group with 50%+ Democratic party ID and the one age group in which 50%+ say they will vote Democratic this fall. The percentage of self-identifying conservatives among Millennials is basically equal with that of self-identifying liberals (28% vs. 29%). The youngest generation of voters is unusually ill-disposed towards movement conservatism of the sort on display at CPAC, which is the event Gardiner hails not only as proof that conservatism is the future but as an “intellectually vibrant” gathering.
Gardiner can believe what he wants, but the evidence we have available right now suggests that conservatism is losing, indeed has already lost, most of the next generation, and that conservatism as we know it today is going to keep losing ground in the future. It is possible that something could happen in the next few years that could change that significantly, but typically once a cohort attaches itself to one party or the other its later voting habits become fairly predictable. The generation that came of age during the Bush years and overwhelmingly backed Obama is not going to become receptive to movement conservatism.
On average, Millennials’ underlying social and political views put them well to the left of their elders. If you dig into the full report, you will see that the recent Republican resurgence owes almost everything to the dramatic shift among members of the so-called “Silent Generation,” whose voting preferences on the generic ballot have gone from being 49-41 Democrat in 2006 to 48-39 Republican for 2010. There have been small shifts in other age groups toward the Republicans, but by far it is the alienation of voters aged 65-82 that has been most damaging to the Democrats’ political strength*. As we all know, these are the voters who are far more likely to turn out than Millennials, which is why Democratic prospects for this election seem as bad as they do even though the Pew survey says that Democrats lead on the generic ballot in every other age group. Among Boomers, Democrats lead 46-42, and among Gen Xers they barely lead 45-44. In other words, the main reason why the GOP is enjoying any sort of political recovery is that many elderly voters have changed their partisan preferences since the last midterm. Republicans remain behind among all voters younger than 65. That does not seem to herald the future revival of movement conservatism of the sort Gardiner is so embarrassingly praising.
* It is mainly among these voters that the conventional wisdom is half right that that the push for health care legislation has proved to be very damaging to the Democrats. Of course, this is not because of some instinctive horror at excessive spending, which does not exist on a large scale in any age group, but because health care legislation is seen as a threat to the entitlement spending from which voters from this age group benefit. As a matter of pure electoral politics, the GOP’s transformation into the defenders of the sanctity of Medicare has been completely in line with the interests of the elderly voters who have come running back to the GOP in the last year. Of course, this is exactly not the profile of a party and movement of the future, but one attempting to preserve the status quo for the benefit of the oldest among us at the expense of our future.
Looking over past CPAC straw polls it seems to confirm what you are saying. The age of respondents to the straw poll is increasingly older.
What is more discouraging is that a lot of movement types loathe the one person, Ron Paul, who has succeeded in drawing a lot of young and enthusiastic supporters into politics.
One small bit of good news is that Ron Paul did win the straw poll. Still, 69% of the participants went for someone else, and I would say that probably understates the movement’s dislike for Paul and his supporters.
I listened to the results on CSPAN. Lots of boos for Ron Paul when the results were announced. More boos than he had cheers. And for Romney, more cheers than Paul did.
I think that if Scott Brown had been on the ballot he would have won. Heard that he was treated like a rock star at CPAC.
Those who reached voting age in 2008 were four years old in 1994. In that year there were two gay weddings of fictional characters on television – males on Roseanne, females on Friends.
Lots of interesting stuff in that report. While the GOP ID didn’t increase they did gain 7% for Millennials that now lean GOP. Believing in a social safety net has decreased in all generations. While everyone thinks gov’t needs to assert more regulation. Affirmative Action took a huge hit with Millennials. Also I found it odd that Millennials were the only group that had an uptick about old fashioned values. I kind of think that’s a throw away one.
I’m just at the end of Gen X and have a bunch of friends who are older Millennials and also have worked with Millennials in school and youth groups.
I think this pretty much reflects what I see. Millennials are much more non-interventionists than other generations. Socially more liberal and generally for government programs. But the Millennials that are conservative tend to be of the more libertarian variety except even those aren’t complete against gov’t.
With Dems staying in Afghanistan that is going to continue to bleed Millennials. That and if Dems continue to be unsuccessful in getting their domestic goals made.
I do think the GOP will have a hardtime in 2012 and if they do win it’s without Millennials help. Which is sad for me since I really would love to see a fiscally conservative, non-interventionist or at least pragmatic foreign policy and a socially moderate candidate.
Generations do go in cycles though Millennials tend to be more like Boomers than Gen X, so in 2018 we will start to see our first Gen Zs voting, maybe with two bad wars and a mismanagement of government from both sides, we can finally see a candidate like what I described above.
There’s a stark realization in the GOP that there was a generational and cultural line drawn in roughly 1968 in Middle America. (It happened a few years earlier in parts of the Northeast and sometime in the mid/late Seventies in parts of the South.) That line is where Republican ideologues set up an Iron Curtain on acceptable social and economic views. Then they started gulaging its dissenters and shooting deserters. That regime held up until 2005 or 2006. (In retrospect it’s annoying how much imitation there was/is of the CPSU, actually, especially in the end stages- from the secret police state to the People’s Congresses aka Republican Conventions to the Comintern media strategies and Komsomol.) Now there’s more than a small whiff of eastern European post-Communism to the show.
The next American generational/cultural line runs through the Nineties. People who came of age on this side of it struggle to make sense of the pre-1968 conventions of the GOP ancien regime.
I never know how much stock to put into these reports. To start with, I’m not all that convinced that one’s views at 25 are all that predictive of one’s views at 35 or 45. Over the past 60 or 70 years, the GOP has for the most part been a minority party with the ability to poll about even in Presidential elections. At least some of that is attributable to voters that came of age during around FDR that would never forget that the GOP wouldn’t support the common man. I’m hesitant to ascribe similar motives to the present generation coming of age in this maelstrom even though the parallel is tempting. I certainly don’t believe we are seeing an FDR type shift because of something like gay marriage. Even the real civil rights movement didn’t have that, and there were much greater numbers there.
Not to keep going back there, but I think it is being forgotten. The regional breakdowns are the things that should really be scaring the GOP. GOP popularity is so intense in the South that it fudges the national numbers. There are presently no Republican House of Reps members from the northeast. That is truly incredible. And though Brown won MA, he seems to be more the exception proving the rule.
Daniel, amonst my crowd (Mid-30′s IT), we loved Ron Paul’s ideas. But the more we got to know the man, the less we wanted him specifically running the country. I know you love the guy, and you are correct that his hard-line libertarian views could resonate with the younger generation, but the man has too much of a truther/anti-semtitic/crazy feel about him. If it was possible to find a more charismatic and empathetic personality that had the same strong political views, then we could have a future winner. I think that is all the party needs – the right darkhorse to come off the deep bench, completely disregard the Rush Limbaugh/Glen Beck/Fox News wing of the party, promise to reign in spending, reign in foreign military exploits, give the states freedom to handle so much of what the government has taken via the commerce clause, etc. I think lots of young people would respond great to that type of conservative message.
M.Z. Forrest, on February 21st, 2010 at 11:04 pm Said:
“I never know how much stock to put into these reports. To start with, I’m not all that convinced that one’s views at 25 are all that predictive of one’s views at 35 or 45.”
I don’t have the cites to hand, but IIRC the whole reason that political scientists and sociologist say this is that it is in fact a persistent phenomenon. People’s attitudes get substantially fixed, and change slooooooooowly.
Mcaffrey,
“completely disregard the Rush Limbaugh/Glen Beck/Fox News wing of the party” means opposing the major ‘spokesmen’ of the party. They should have ample power to destroy anybody in the GOP whom they really don’t like.
‘promise to reign in spending’ – there’s a GOP politician who doesn’t promise that every day?
‘reign in foreign military exploits’ – boom, that knocks that GOP politician down to Ron Paul levels of support. The base loooooooooooooooooooooooves them some fireworks, and knowing that real, almost human brown people are suffering adds that something special that Hollywood CGI just can’t provide. The military-industrial complex – well, enough said. Other factions, IMHO, enjoy lots of war, because the president as wartime leader can get more done than as a civilian president. Pork goes down better with a thick slathering of ‘support the troops’, ‘whose side are you on?’ and ‘you want the other side to win!’. .
‘give the states freedom to handle so much of what the government has taken via the commerce clause’ – as we’ve seen (abortion, gun control, lawsuits, etc.) this lasts only until the states start ‘misusing’ their freedoms :)
BarryD:
They should have ample power to destroy anybody in the GOP whom they really don’t like.
Limbaugh destroyed McCain so effectively that he was reduced to accepting the Republican presidential nomination. And Huckabee was left with nothing to do but host a television show.
mcaffrey:
[Ron Paul] has too much of a truther/anti-semtitic/crazy feel about him.
Such sleazy insinuations discredit the person who makes them, not the person they are aimed at.
You have no evidence Paul has said or done anything ‘anti-semitic’, so you claim a ‘feel’? Please.
David Tomlin, if you don’t consider the racism and anti-semitism of the Ron Paul newsletter to be evidence, perhaps you can explain why the neo-Nazi sites are so joyous about Ron Paul’s recent triumph?
BarryD – yeah, I know it isn’t realistic. I was more trying to describe the type of conservative platform that I think would appeal to young people. I have no idea how to get from here to there.
David – I understand your anger at my sentiments. And I don’t think Ron Paul personally is racist or anti-semitic. But he does have a history of tolerating people who hold those views (ie, his newsletter), and he hasn’t gone out of his way to denounce them enough to shed that image. It may be completely unfair, but that is a common general perception of him, and it prevents him from drawing a larger group of supporters.
I imagine neo-Nazis would applaud anyone who opposes aid to Israel – even if, like Ron Paul (and me) they do so as part of a principled opposition to foreign aid in general.
Of course there are people who think opposing aid to Israel, or wanting to shave one dime off of aid to Israel, is ‘anti-semitism’.
mcaffrey:
I understand your anger . . .
Anger? Your word, not mine.
he hasn’t gone out of his way to denounce them enough to shed that image.
Letting others publish over his name was a lapse of judgment that Paul’s political opponents will always be able to use against him. No amount of groveling will change that.
Rattling that ancient skeleton is fair enough as politics goes. I still say expressions like ‘anti-semitic feel’, without specifics, are sleazy innuendos.
I’m sorry to say I’ve neglected the most important point to be made in defense of Ron Paul regarding bigotry.
In March of 2008, Ron Paul was one of only five Republican House members to vote for overriding President Bush’s veto of a ban on torture. Here are his remarks in support of his position:
http://www.antiwar.com/paul/?articleid=12509
I don’t know how many links it takes to trip the spam filter, so I’m only posting one. Googling ‘Ron Paul torture’ will yield other examples of his speaking out on this issue, some as early as 2004.
Surely, callousness toward the mistreatment of the mostly non-white, non-Christian captives of the ‘war on terror’ is the most important manifestation of bigotry in our country today. For those who really care about such matters, I would think Paul’s courageous stand on torture would be more important than some ancient history about newsletters.
[...] a Pew survey identified earlier this year, it seems to be the case. As Daniel Larson wrote: If you dig into the full report, you will see that the recent Republican [...]