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The Grand Old and Tired Party

Josh Barro expects Republican attacks on Hillary Clinton to fail: Of course, attacks on Clinton’s age are likely to produce a backlash. But let’s say Republicans manage to walk a fine line: hit her for having “old ideas” and being around Washington too long without directly invoking her age. The strategy still doesn’t make any […]

Josh Barro expects Republican attacks on Hillary Clinton to fail:

Of course, attacks on Clinton’s age are likely to produce a backlash. But let’s say Republicans manage to walk a fine line: hit her for having “old ideas” and being around Washington too long without directly invoking her age.

The strategy still doesn’t make any sense, because the Republicans are the party of old, tired ideas.

Barro is making his usual argument about the GOP’s lack of a relevant economic agenda, which is true enough, but there are other reasons this line of attack doesn’t seem very promising for Republicans. Clinton has been living or working in Washington for over twenty years. In theory, that could create an opening for the GOP to run against Washington as the party out of power usually does. On the other hand, that advantage would probably be lost if the GOP nominates a member of Congress. Republicans just lost an election in which their nominee had the least political and foreign policy experience in decades, so it seems more than a little strange that they would want to emphasize the relative inexperience of their next nominee. The GOP would also be wise not to underestimate the power of the nostalgia for the ’90s that a Clinton candidacy could trigger. The ’90s were a prosperous and relatively more peaceful time for the U.S., Clinton’s husband left office with high approval ratings, and both Clintons are now viewed favorably by a large majority of Americans. To the extent that voters respond to a 2016 Clinton campaign with nostalgia for the last Clinton administration, it could give the Democrats an added boost.

The article that Barro cites says that GOP strategists “are eager to demonstrate that [Republicans] represent a new generation,” but simply having a younger nominee making most or all of the same arguments that McCain and Romney made isn’t going to do that. The GOP has set itself up as being anything but representative of a “new generation,” which is one reason why there is such a huge generational gap in support for the two parties. Millennials haven’t been voting overwhelmingly for Democrats in the last four elections simply because Republican politicians are too old. They vote this way because the GOP caters to the interests of older voters and also has little or nothing to say to them, and they do so because their main experience of Republican governance was the Bush administration. Nominating a younger candidate doesn’t change any of this, and would be a good example of how the GOP wants to fix substantive weaknesses with a superficial remedy.

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