"... a new report from the
<http://www.crnc.org/home/>College Republican
National Committee (CRNC) strongly suggests that
another tack would be even more successful: The
GOP should embrace its small, youthful, and
increasingly influential libertarian caucus that
focuses on cutting government spending -- even or
especially on old-age entitlements -- and quit
fretting over gay marriage or the need to invade and occupy foreign countries.
"Despite its endless small-government rhetoric,
such a change may be too radical for a Republican
Party whose last two candidates were a combined
138 years old when they ran for the Oval Office.
But it’s the best way forward for a GOP that’s
even less exciting than
<http://www.brandstories.net/2012/08/10/gms-classic-storytelling-fail-not-your-fathers-oldsmobile/>your
father’s Oldsmobile."
To Win Millenials, the GOP Needs To Embrace Its Inner Libertarian
The under-30 crowd doesn’t think much of most
Democrats, but it’s got an easy lower opinion of
Republicans. Nick Gillespie on how the GOP can revive its brand.
Nick Gillespie
Jun 4, 2013 4:45 AM EDT
Earlier this year, Bobby Jindal, the GOP governor
of Louisiana, surveyed the wreckage of Mitt
Romney’s sad-sack presidential campaign and told
his fellow Republicans that if they ever want to
capture the White House again,
“<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2013/01/25/bobby-jindal-breaks-it-down-for-the-gop/>We
must stop being the stupid party.”
While Michelle Bachmann’s decision not to run for
a fifth term helps the party out on that score, a
new report from the
<http://www.crnc.org/home/>College Republican
National Committee (CRNC) strongly suggests that
another tack would be even more successful: The
GOP should embrace its small, youthful, and
increasingly influential libertarian caucus that
focuses on cutting government spending -- even or
especially on old-age entitlements -- and quit
fretting over gay marriage or the need to invade and occupy foreign countries.
Despite its endless small-government rhetoric,
such a change may be too radical for a Republican
Party whose last two candidates were a combined
138 years old when they ran for the Oval Office.
But it’s the best way forward for a GOP that’s
even less exciting than
<http://www.brandstories.net/2012/08/10/gms-classic-storytelling-fail-not-your-fathers-oldsmobile/>your
father’s Oldsmobile.
Drawing on August 2012 and March 2013 surveys and
focus groups of 800 registered voters aged 18 to
29 from around the country, “Grand Old Party for
a Brand New Generation” observes that it was the
youth vote that largely consigned Mitt Romney to
the ranks of presidential losers. Romney pulled 2
million more votes than Barack Obama among voters
over 30, but the incumbent won a whopping 5
million more votes than the former Massachusetts
governor from so-called Millennials. That’s even
more stunning given that voters aged 18 to 29 had
lost much of their enthusiasm for Obama. In 2008,
Obama outpolled John McCain among young people by
34 percentage points, while in 2012, his lead
dwindled to just 23 points. “The election
reinforce[s] the generational challenge fac[ing] the GOP,” deadpans the report.
What do young voters want? More than anything, a
shot at working and thriving in a growing
economy. Yet even though only 22 percent of
Millenials thought “Obama’s policies had made it
easier for young people to get a job” and “only
29 percent thought they were better off as a
result of the stimulus package...Democrats held a
16-point advantage over the Republican Party
among young voters on handling of the economy and
jobs (chosen as the top issue by 37 percent of respondents).”
That’s because young voters are turned off by the
GOP’s emphasis on tax cuts uber alles and habit
of embracing big businesses rather than scrappy
entrepreneurs. They are equally turned off by the
GOP’s constant thumping on gay marriage, which
more than any other social issue has emerged as a
“deal breaker,” or an issue that will cause a
voter who agrees on everything else with a
candidate to vote for his or her opponent.
Abortion, immigration, even health care are less
important in this regard, according to the CRNC.
Millenials, says the report, don’t care much
about abstractions such as that favorite
Republican bogeyman, “big government.” But they
are into cutting government spending and reducing
national debt, as they realize both things are
strangling their future before it begins. Fully
90 percent agree that Social Security and
Medicare need to be reformed now, 82 percent are
ready to “make tough choices about cutting
government spending, even on some programs some
people really like,” and 72 percent want to cut
the size of government “because it is simply too
big.” Only 17 percent want to increase spending
on defense and just 30 percent said that
“marriage should be legally defined as only
between a man and a women,” with 44 percent
saying same-sex marriage should be legal
everywhere and 26 percent saying it should be up to individual states.
You don’t need a decoder ring to read the
libertarian strain in such responses. Often
described as socially liberal and fiscally
conservative, libertarians argue for keeping the
government out of the boardroom and the bedroom.
They tend to favor more-open borders for people
as well as goods and services, agitate for
legalization (or at least decriminalization) of
drugs, and push for choice in whom you can marry
as well as where you send your kids to school.
Today’s younger voters – who have grown up in a
wild, wired world in which the click of a mouse
brings forth endless options in entertainment,
commerce, and identity – naturally imbibe an
essentially libertarian ethos that privileges
individual choice over top-down control. They’re
not anarchists: The CRNC report notes that 88
percent support safety-net programs that help
people temporarily and 86 percent favor trimming
regulations but maintaining ones “that keep us
safe.” But Millennials plainly have a spirit of
innovation and experimentation that is stymied by centralized government.
These views should provide an opening for
Republicans. If Obama once conjured up the
audacity of hope, he has pissed it away with a
failed economic program, endless new regulatory
schemes, and continued wars on terror and drugs
that rival or exceed the follies of George W.
Bush. During January 2013 focus groups conducted
for the study, the CRNC asked respondents to name
future leaders of the Democrats. Even Democrats
had trouble coming up with one. Newark Mayor Cory
Booker, a rare Democratic champion of school
choice
<http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/bam_on_cory_he_dead_to_us_1GuWVs0Tx3HuxZ9mu5SSPJ>who
got into trouble with the Obama administration
for defending Mitt Romney’s private-equity firm
Bain Capital during the election, came up
occasionally but more typical responses were “We
don’t have any” and “I can’t think of any.”
The Republicans, on the other hand, seem
relatively flush with young studs who are at
least partly libertarian in spirit: “Marco Rubio,
Chris Christie, Paul Ryan, Bobby Jindal, and Rand
Paul were all mentioned” in focus groups,
according to “Grand Old Party for a Brand New Generation.”
Of these, the last two are perhaps most
interesting and on point. As governor of
Louisiana, Jindal has simultaneously taken a
scalpel to his state’s budgetgarnering an
<http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/fiscal-policy-report-card-americas-governors-2010>A
grade in fiscal policy from the libertarian Cato
Institutepushed school choice, and, despite
being an “unapologetic pro-life Republican”
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324640104578163120400999616.html>called
for oral contraceptives to be made available
without a prescription. Whatever the merits of
his individual proposals, he is working hard to
save the GOP from the “stupid party” label and he
is certainly not your father’s Oldsmobile.
Rand Paul, the freshman senator from Kentucky, is
already a front-runner for the GOP nomination in
2016, having won the straw poll at CPAC after
making a speech in which he called his own party
“stale and moss-covered.” He’s made a name for
himself by challenging the Obama administration
on its terrible civil-liberties record, calling
for a non-interventionist foreign policy, and
<http://www.paul.senate.gov/files/documents/FY2014Budget.pdf>proposing
a budget that would immediately trim $500 billion
in annual federal spending and theoretically
balance the budget in five years. He’s also a
proponent of industrial hemp legalization and
drug-sentencing reform, issues on which he’s
reached across party lines. While he is himself a
socially conservative Christian,
<http://reason.com/archives/2013/06/03/interview-with-rand-paul/singlepage>he
also believes “states should be able to craft
their own drug or marriage policies, instead of the federal government.”
Unlike most of his fellow Republicans, he takes
seriously the idea of reaching out to a broad
cross-section of Americans,
<http://reason.com/blog/2013/05/24/rand-pauls-hipster-outreach-mofo-party-p>telling
a New Hampshire audience, “We need to be white,
we need to be brown, we need to be black, we need
to with tattoos, without tattoos, with pony
tails, without pony tails, with beards, without.”
Paul has taken his
<http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamespoulos/2013/05/23/rand-paul-is-right-republicans-need-a-crash-hipster-outreach-program/>“hipster
outreach program” to historically black colleges
and to Silicon Valley. He is one of the few
politicians of either party who openly talks
about changing old-age entitlements so they no
longer rob from the relatively young and poor and
give to the relatively old and wealthy.
Characters such as Paul and Jindal suggest that
the Republican Party might just have a future
with younger voters. Which means it also may have
a future with the rest of us, too, by offering an
alternative not just to the Democrats but to the
old and “stupid party” that fared so poorly in
the last two presidential elections.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/04/to-win-millenials-the-gop-needs-to-embrace-its-inner-libertarian.html
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