The GOP’s Generational Time Bomb
Posted on October 29th, 2009
by Daniel McCarthy |
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The GOP might do reasonably well next week, with Republican Bob McDonnell set to coast to victory in Virginia’s gubernatorial contest, though I suspect New Jersey might again (as always) dash the party’s hopes. I suspect Democratic incumbent John Corzine will pull through in the Garden State. I have no idea what will happen in NY-23, the Scozzaffava/Hoffman/Owens race — can polls showing Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman in the lead be believed? Jim Antle has a good piece on the race and its implications here.
Between being competitive in these races and a rather favorable climate developing for the 2010 midterms, the GOP might seem to have floated out of its doldrums without liquidating its leadership or examining at all seriously what went wrong during the Bush years. But there’s something in the offing that should worry the Republican establishment a bit: the party still looks to have little in the way of a future, with younger Americans leaning heavily Democratic and “liberal.” Where there does seem to be activist energy and passion on the young Right, it’s in the Ron Paul camp, which the GOP still prefers to ignore. A few months ago I took a look at this subject in the mag put out by Young Americans for Liberty. That piece, “The Battle for America’s Youth,” is now online here. The youth vote won’t be a big problem for the GOP in 2010 because chances are very few young people will bother going to the polls. But in the decades to come, the cohort that voted strongly for Obama in 2008 is likely to continue to vote Democratic, which will have larger consequences once they start going to the polls more regularly as they age. The GOP won’t be able to offset that trend by rallying around the dead-end politics of George W. Bush, even repackaged in the shape of Sarah Palin. Any success the party enjoys in the near term only postpones the reckoning that must come.
Filed under: Politics, Ron Paul
Actually, the population is gradually shifting to the right with already twice as many people identifying themselves as conservatives rather than liberals. The Republicans have lost the identity that they are fiscal conservatives who are at least willing to stop increasing government spending if not decrease it. Republicans are just viewed as Democrat-lite in terms of economics in that they will increase government spending at a slightly lower rate than the Democrats. The time-bomb that will hit the Republicans is that another party will take dominance in the huge void between them and the Ron Paul camp unless they regain some semblance that they are fiscal conservatives.
I don’t share the author’s worries about our youth. The pressure needs to be put on educating our children to the intents of the socialists among us. I believe that racism among minorities and envy is the impetus for a move toward socialism. The Civil Rights movement is no longer civil and is nothing more than a tool of the corrupt, trying to expand its reach. Fortunately, these people are getting impatient and their true intents are starting to show more day by day. They are so blind in their ambitions that they would make slaves of us all, themselves included.
I could not agree more with the author about his view of the American political landscape. I have become completely disillusioned with the Republican Party and find myself more and more in line with the thinking of Ron Paul and his ilk. I do not care if two people of the same sex want to sleep together or marry, but I very much care about government encroaching further and further into my life and straying farther and farther from the Constitution. The GOP is going to have to work EXTREMELY hard to get me back into to fold by showing me that it wants to respect the rights of the individual and the states, that it wants to reduce government spending and it wants to respect the Constitution.
The problem the party has is not that young people don’t want fiscal conservatives. That is a fine goal to strive for. The problem is that the party is being high-jacked by a bunch of social conservatives that are pushing candidates that most independents are not comfortable with. That is why you see the popularity of the Ron Paul camp. Fiscal conservative without the social conservative baggage..
The trouble with polls that compare the percentage of Americans who identify themselves as “liberal” with the number who identify as conservatives is that most liberals don’t call themselves liberals. The more left-leaning of them prefer “progressive,” while the center-left consider themselves “moderates.”
More and more people see how organized religion has been gamed, and take it for what it is.
Also, being a party of exclusion becomes more of a problem as communications (internet, etc.) expose the masses to alternatives. Bypassing the propaganda dogma and reducing the number of haters each year in turn reduces fodder needed to groom divisive people.
The point is, haters are becoming more virulent, but fewer in numbers, and it’s numbers that win elections.
Authors need to stop wiring generic statements like “the dead-end politics of George W. Bush”. The biggest problems with George Bush’s politics was that he massively abandoned conservative principles in a number of critical areas, but still billed himself as a conservative, thereby giving conservatism a bad name. Although Bush cut taxes, he created the largest expansion in Medicare since it began with the prescription drug benefit; next he massively increased the US government’s role in and expenditures in education with his No Child Left Behind bill. Not only were both of thes NOT conservative measures, but they were in fact pushed by and even written by Democrats. (Ted Kennedy wrote No Child Left Behind.)
Next, Bush did nothing to stop Democratic measures that expanded problems in the housing market (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac policies, government-supported coercion of banks to give bad loans, etc.).
And, of course, Bush then allowed Democrats to take him to task for everything without defending his positions or rightfully taking them to task for their contributions.
(And, yes, Bush did bring us into a war that nobody expected would be as long or expensive, and his team did not adjust quickly enough to handle it. But, the US economy could have absorbed the war if the economy didn’t collapse because of non-convervative government policies.)
Also note that adding statements like “…even repackaged in the shape of Sarah Palin” are misleading. Sarah Palin never showed during her governorship that she would promote and/or acquiece to such non-convervative policies that occurred under G.W.
Members of the Republican party need to embrace fiscal and policy conservatism 100%. As one commenter above noted, fiscal conservatism without the social conservative baggage. But even moreso, if a politician seemingly embraces fiscal conservatism by restraining from direct spending and taxation, but continues to meddle in the markets with policies and laws, then the economy will still suffer - dramatically so (as we have seen - and as we will see even more with the disaster that the Obama administration is hoisting upon us).
Polls on conservatism also don’t pick up the general fact that the conservative of today was often the moderate of yesterday and the liberal of the day before.
Shieldzee writes: “I do not care if two people of the same sex want to sleep together or marry, but I very much care about government encroaching further and further into my life and straying farther and farther from the Constitution.”
Same-sex “marriage” will very much result in government expansion and will very much result in a departure from the historical Constitution and the people who upheld it.
Libertarians are camp followers, not policy setters, in the marriage debate. Under so-called progressive leadership, businesses and private organizations will be closed down and schoolteachers fired because they won’t cooperate with the contempt for limits that is marriage redefinition. Religious freedom will be limited to the sanctuary and the home, just like in the old tolerant communist states.
Reading most of the comments presents an image of philosophy in a food processor, with the result being a puree of talking points. Let me simplify this for you- although you now repudiate President Bush for his policies, you voted for him-twice-then slavishly attacked those who criticized those very same policies, and often on religious grounds.
After eight years of the world having to endure watching conservatives torture humans and the Constitution, your protests now fall on deaf ears.
Your policies and practices have brought ruin, and the country has decided to let the reality-based party run things.
Didn’t vote for Paul last go around, but if he runs again I will give him my vote.
Sangjmoon really doesn’t know where he/she stands. Most Young people are not associating themselves with the republican party or the ‘Conservative” view. Saying so is like saying the world with flat. You are going against fact.
Ron Paul seems like the most clear headed and principled republican in american politics and young people (even if they don’t agree with him on some issues) can respect that. When you have respect, you can establish credibility.
Right now The GOP is the party of corporations, the evangelical church, and old tabooish white people.
Most conservative issues such as abortion, the majority of Libertarians agree Roe v. Wade should be overturned and the issue left to the states. A Federal ban on abortion is politically impossible anyhow.
libertarians will never accept something like a federal ban on gay marriage, again, goes to the states.
I am a die hard libertarian. libertarianism: individual and economic liberty, is incredibly compelling and the battle of ideas among youth can, in fact, be won, though it will be hard.
But I can tell you for certain that appeals to religion will not work. It will have the opposite effect. Republicans must dial down the family values rhetoric, nobody wants to be preached too, and it they looks badly on us when they get caught cheating due to hypocrisy.
You must also abandon desire for expansion of empire, we can’t afford it. You also cannot speak of freedom and liberty while supporting the Patriot Act.
I don’t mean to be harsh, but I am speaking the truth. There is an incredibly large body of philosophical work defending natural rights by locke and others, and an equally large body of work by the classical liberal economics defending economic freedom.
IF WE USE REASON ALONE, WE CAN WIN.
It’s do or die. If you want to defend against socialism, aggressive state-enforced secularism and state worship we must be consistent, and we must use reason alone. It has more force than anything else in the world.
Lol’ing at the Republicans and Democrats that still believe there is a difference between their parties.
None of them see that no matter who is in power, the nation’s direction goes the same way. Gay rights? Abortion? Forcing people into buying private health insurance as ‘health care reform’? (So hilarious). Nothing more than carrots to keep the masses trotting along.
Wakey wakey:) Almost time for your corporate news feeding.
I think McCarthy has it exactly right. The party leaders won’t even admit that there was anything wrong with the Bush years, and the GOP seems to developing a new wing that wants to act in both as both fiscal and social conservatives but yet continue to embrace the ethically and economically expensive politics of American exceptionalism.
An environment has to be created that allows new parties to develop.
Target one or more states with initiative and referendum and aim to get either STV (e.g.Ireland) or party-list PR (e.g. Israel and Netherlands) adopted for election of one house of the state legislature.
Also, runoffs should be required for statewide general elections when no one gets a majority in the first round.
http://rangevoting.org/HonestRunoff.html
(…)
21-23 of the delayed runoff countries listed above have multiparties.
(…)
And easy ballot access, of course.
Most real libertarians do not agree that Roe v. Wade should be overturned and sent back to the states, 40 of whom would outlaw abortion. Most libertarians believe that it is solely up to the pregnant woman whether she wants to carry to term or not. No one has a right to be born and no one has a right to reside inside the body of another against that person’s consent. The real libertarian position on abortion was stated in The Ethics Of Liberty by Murray Rothbard. Force in this or any area is the opposite of reason.
@Michael
Of course Murray Rothbard, Mr. libertarian himself, feels the Federal Government, and especially, the Supreme court, has no right to enforce legalization of abortion.
Go to http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics.pdf the ebook of Ethics of Liberty, page 38:
“Thus, while in favor of a woman’s
right to have an abortion, Rothbard was nonetheless strictly opposed to the
U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade, which recognized such a right.
This was not because he believed the court’s finding concerning the legality
of abortion wrong, but on the more fundamental ground that the US.
Supreme Court had no jurisdiction in the matter and that, by assuming
it, the court had engendered a systematic centralization of state power.”
I’m an officer of a large Young Americans for Liberty chapter in the Midwest. I can tell you already that we will be bigger than College Republicans by the end of this school year. The GOP has lost all credibility on fiscal conservatism and most young people understand the wars we are fighting now are big quagmires and hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians have died. We do more events than College Republicans, we sign more people up, we are more active, we understand the issues very well, and we talk about issues like monetary policy that the entrenched GOP establish won’t touch.
“Michael Hardesty, on October 30th, 2009 at 9:47 am Said:
… No one has a right to be born and no one has a right to reside inside the body of another against that person’s consent. …”
I disagree with Micheal’s statement. The Law of Action and Reaction contradicts it (known also as the Law of Consequence). If a woman knowing performs actions for which the consequence is pregnancy, then she has given her consent and that child has a right to be born. In cases of non-consent such as rape and incest, or in a case where the life of the mother would be a required sacrifice to birth the baby (that is to say, she would die), the rights of the baby do not preempt the rights of the mother.
REMEMBER, THE HIPPIE GENERATION WAS ALL LIBERAL DEMOCRATS AS WELL. WHEN THEY GREW UP THEY ALL BECAME REPUBLICANS AND VOTED FOR REAGAN, BUSH & BUSH. CAN YOU THINK OF ANYONE WHO HAS THE SAME OUTLOOK ON ANYTHING WHEN THEY ARE 30 THAT THEY HAD WHEN THEY WERE TEENS. THE ANSWER IS NO. THIS IS ACTUALLY GREAT NEWS FOR THE REPUBLICANS UNLESS TEENAGERS ACTUALLY ARE BORN KNOWING EVERYTHING NOWADAYS AND GROWN UPS KNOW NOTHING.
Except that’s not true — the hippies may have been radicals, but most young people in the Vietnam era were not hippies. There were New Left radicals who became Reaganites, including some famous neoconservatives. But that generation as a whole was less left-wing than its most colorful representatives would lead you to think. In fact, that was the problem for the Democrats: after 1972, the popular image of the Democratic Party had been pushed farther to the social left than most Truman-, Kennedy-, or Johnson-style Democrats could tolerate. Thus even many “moderate” liberals in the Vietnam generation could wind up voting for Nixon or Reagan.
If the Vietnam example tells us anything, it’s that young voters who are now Obama-ites could turn right if the Democratic Party lurches to the left of Obama, but I don’t see that happening. They probably will get more conservative in some respects as they get older, but Pew studies suggest that voting patterns don’t shift too easily as people age.