mediahasyou
06-21-2009, 04:46 PM
http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/48692917.html
Washington — Speaking to a group called the Youth Entitlements Summit last week, GOP Rep. Paul Ryan explained why conservative ideas on health care and Social Security should appeal to the politically diverse mix of young activists in his audience.
"We're in an iPod-Amazon.com-Orbitz-Travelocity society," Ryan told them. "When you demand choice at your fingertips in every aspect of your lives, why shouldn't you demand that of government?"
For the Republican Party, no political task is more vital than improving its image among younger voters.
Some in the GOP, including Wisconsin's Ryan, see the debate over the Obama administration's costly and ambitious domestic agenda as an opportunity to make the case to these voters for smaller government, lower spending and "pro-market" policy reforms.
"I do believe that the terrifying deficits we are staring at now . . . the threat that poses to every young person in this country presents an opening," Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana said recently. "But let's face it . . . as a party, a lot of credibility has been forfeited on that score. It won't return overnight."
The political problem Republicans confront is daunting. Voters under 30 voted 66% to 32% for Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 - part of the biggest age disparity the exit polls have ever measured in a race for president. Young voters were the GOP's worst age group in 2006 and 2004 as well.
History suggests that an entire generation's partisan profile can be shaped in the first decade of voting. Imagine a Democratic-leaning millennial generation (those born between the late 1970s and the year 2000) adding 4 million potential voters a year to the U.S. electorate over the next decade.
"That's pretty scary for our side," says Chris Malagisi, 28, who worked on the last two GOP presidential campaigns and recently founded the D.C.-based Young Conservatives Coalition to promote and coordinate youth activism on the right.
"We must . . . direct ourselves almost entirely to the young people of this country," Daniels said of the GOP at a talk he gave here recently, calling it "a starting point for our recovery that we examine every issue and present every issue in terms of its implications for" that generation.
Nonpartisan pollster Scott Keeter points to two attributes of young voters that pose major challenges for Republicans.
One is their diversity. As Keeter notes, the GOP is "almost entirely a party made up of whites, and it has struggled to find a way to appeal to minorities."
Voters 30 and over in 2008 were 77% white, according to exit polls. Voters under 30 were 62% white. The party's need to do better with young voters goes hand in hand with its need to do better with black, Hispanic and Asian voters.
The other challenge is cultural, says Keeter, director of survey research for the Pew Research Center.
Young voters are less socially conservative than the electorate as a whole on issues ranging from homosexuality to immigration. They are also more secular and participate less in organized religion. In a recent Pew poll, 25% of Americans born since 1976 were atheist, agnostic or "nothing in particular" - compared with 13% of baby boomers.
"Young voters need to see a GOP that is more socially libertarian, particularly toward gay rights. With changing demographics come changing attitudes," Republican consultant Mike Murphy wrote in Time magazine this month, lamenting in the same column that "A GOP ice age is on the way."
These trends make it all the more urgent for the party to find issues on which it can resonate with younger voters. Some GOP officials and strategists argue that over time, the party's message of lower spending, limited government and faith in markets can fit that bill.
"With young voters, it's an audience that's just ripe to hear the kind of Republican libertarian economic message, especially given the contrast we have now" with the sweeping Obama agenda, said GOP pollster Kristen Soltis of the Winston Group.
But recent polling suggests that task comes with its own challenges.
In Pew's polling for example, young voters are "the most pro-government" generation, says Keeter - less cynical about government and less skeptical about government efficiency than older voters.
In the 2008 National Election Study by the University of Michigan, 66% of those in the millennial generation said the government should provide more rather than fewer services, compared with 46% of those over 60. Those younger voters were also the most supportive of government-run universal health care.
"I don't really see an opening for conservatives with these voters when it comes to spending, entitlements, the role of government and health care," said Erica Williams of Campus Progress, an arm of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress.
GOP pollster Soltis agreed that younger voters are less skeptical of government than older ones.
"A lot of young voters are asking, 'What's so great about small government? How does it make my life better?' " she said.
But Soltis said the lesson for Republicans is that they can't rely simply on an anti-government message; they have to persuade these voters that conservative policies would result in better outcomes as well as more individual choice.
Malagisi, of the Young Conservatives Coalition, said the GOP has suffered from two things: confusion about its message and a lack of effort and outreach to young voters. He said he modeled his organization after efforts on the left to mobilize young people and build coalitions.
He argued that young voters are receptive to both conservative messages (economic freedom) and generational appeals (the impact of rising spending on the government debt they will inherit).
"We have to communicate (that) they're spending our Social Security, they're spending our Medicare away in the next 10 years," Malagisi said.
Some analysts interviewed for this story were skeptical that debt, deficits and entitlement reform are front-tier issues for young voters at this point.
But Ryan, the Janesville congressman, hit those issues hard when he was invited to be the closing speaker Monday for the Youth Entitlements Summit, a nonpartisan gathering of young activists from the right, left and center to talk about the impact of government health care and retirement programs on younger Americans.
Ryan told his audience that entitlements were unsustainable as they exist today and will crowd out growth and jobs for future workers.
"The next generation will not be better off," he told them. "The path we're on right now is the wrong path. It's the path that is going to give us more debt, higher taxes, less freedom."
Ryan coupled his conservative message with a rebuke of divisive politics and a note of inclusiveness.
"It doesn't matter if you're Jewish, Christian, agnostic, Muslim, gay, straight, man, woman, black, white, Latino, Asian or in between," he said. "The point is, do you agree that we ought to preserve . . . liberty, freedom, self-determination, free enterprise?"
That tone went over well with the young activists in his audience, said Thierry Dongala, a self-described political moderate who was at the conference representing Americans for Generational Equity.
"We don't like divisiveness. It doesn't ring well with us," Dongala said.
Whether the GOP can find the right tone and the right message to compete for the newest generation of voters may largely determine the party's competitiveness in the next decade or two.
The performance of the economy and the Obama administration will certainly be critical; Pew's recent poll found Americans under 30 being hit harder in key ways (jobs, paying the rent or mortgage) by the recession than older Americans.
"I don't think this is set in stone," pollster Keeter said of recent voting patterns among the young. But unless they change, he said, those trends "should be truly frightening to the Republican Party."
we need to emphasize that the GOP should cater more towards a youthful libertarian message. if the GOP trys to be more moderate with their platform to gain more votes, why cant they be more libertarian to gain more votes?
Washington — Speaking to a group called the Youth Entitlements Summit last week, GOP Rep. Paul Ryan explained why conservative ideas on health care and Social Security should appeal to the politically diverse mix of young activists in his audience.
"We're in an iPod-Amazon.com-Orbitz-Travelocity society," Ryan told them. "When you demand choice at your fingertips in every aspect of your lives, why shouldn't you demand that of government?"
For the Republican Party, no political task is more vital than improving its image among younger voters.
Some in the GOP, including Wisconsin's Ryan, see the debate over the Obama administration's costly and ambitious domestic agenda as an opportunity to make the case to these voters for smaller government, lower spending and "pro-market" policy reforms.
"I do believe that the terrifying deficits we are staring at now . . . the threat that poses to every young person in this country presents an opening," Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana said recently. "But let's face it . . . as a party, a lot of credibility has been forfeited on that score. It won't return overnight."
The political problem Republicans confront is daunting. Voters under 30 voted 66% to 32% for Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 - part of the biggest age disparity the exit polls have ever measured in a race for president. Young voters were the GOP's worst age group in 2006 and 2004 as well.
History suggests that an entire generation's partisan profile can be shaped in the first decade of voting. Imagine a Democratic-leaning millennial generation (those born between the late 1970s and the year 2000) adding 4 million potential voters a year to the U.S. electorate over the next decade.
"That's pretty scary for our side," says Chris Malagisi, 28, who worked on the last two GOP presidential campaigns and recently founded the D.C.-based Young Conservatives Coalition to promote and coordinate youth activism on the right.
"We must . . . direct ourselves almost entirely to the young people of this country," Daniels said of the GOP at a talk he gave here recently, calling it "a starting point for our recovery that we examine every issue and present every issue in terms of its implications for" that generation.
Nonpartisan pollster Scott Keeter points to two attributes of young voters that pose major challenges for Republicans.
One is their diversity. As Keeter notes, the GOP is "almost entirely a party made up of whites, and it has struggled to find a way to appeal to minorities."
Voters 30 and over in 2008 were 77% white, according to exit polls. Voters under 30 were 62% white. The party's need to do better with young voters goes hand in hand with its need to do better with black, Hispanic and Asian voters.
The other challenge is cultural, says Keeter, director of survey research for the Pew Research Center.
Young voters are less socially conservative than the electorate as a whole on issues ranging from homosexuality to immigration. They are also more secular and participate less in organized religion. In a recent Pew poll, 25% of Americans born since 1976 were atheist, agnostic or "nothing in particular" - compared with 13% of baby boomers.
"Young voters need to see a GOP that is more socially libertarian, particularly toward gay rights. With changing demographics come changing attitudes," Republican consultant Mike Murphy wrote in Time magazine this month, lamenting in the same column that "A GOP ice age is on the way."
These trends make it all the more urgent for the party to find issues on which it can resonate with younger voters. Some GOP officials and strategists argue that over time, the party's message of lower spending, limited government and faith in markets can fit that bill.
"With young voters, it's an audience that's just ripe to hear the kind of Republican libertarian economic message, especially given the contrast we have now" with the sweeping Obama agenda, said GOP pollster Kristen Soltis of the Winston Group.
But recent polling suggests that task comes with its own challenges.
In Pew's polling for example, young voters are "the most pro-government" generation, says Keeter - less cynical about government and less skeptical about government efficiency than older voters.
In the 2008 National Election Study by the University of Michigan, 66% of those in the millennial generation said the government should provide more rather than fewer services, compared with 46% of those over 60. Those younger voters were also the most supportive of government-run universal health care.
"I don't really see an opening for conservatives with these voters when it comes to spending, entitlements, the role of government and health care," said Erica Williams of Campus Progress, an arm of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress.
GOP pollster Soltis agreed that younger voters are less skeptical of government than older ones.
"A lot of young voters are asking, 'What's so great about small government? How does it make my life better?' " she said.
But Soltis said the lesson for Republicans is that they can't rely simply on an anti-government message; they have to persuade these voters that conservative policies would result in better outcomes as well as more individual choice.
Malagisi, of the Young Conservatives Coalition, said the GOP has suffered from two things: confusion about its message and a lack of effort and outreach to young voters. He said he modeled his organization after efforts on the left to mobilize young people and build coalitions.
He argued that young voters are receptive to both conservative messages (economic freedom) and generational appeals (the impact of rising spending on the government debt they will inherit).
"We have to communicate (that) they're spending our Social Security, they're spending our Medicare away in the next 10 years," Malagisi said.
Some analysts interviewed for this story were skeptical that debt, deficits and entitlement reform are front-tier issues for young voters at this point.
But Ryan, the Janesville congressman, hit those issues hard when he was invited to be the closing speaker Monday for the Youth Entitlements Summit, a nonpartisan gathering of young activists from the right, left and center to talk about the impact of government health care and retirement programs on younger Americans.
Ryan told his audience that entitlements were unsustainable as they exist today and will crowd out growth and jobs for future workers.
"The next generation will not be better off," he told them. "The path we're on right now is the wrong path. It's the path that is going to give us more debt, higher taxes, less freedom."
Ryan coupled his conservative message with a rebuke of divisive politics and a note of inclusiveness.
"It doesn't matter if you're Jewish, Christian, agnostic, Muslim, gay, straight, man, woman, black, white, Latino, Asian or in between," he said. "The point is, do you agree that we ought to preserve . . . liberty, freedom, self-determination, free enterprise?"
That tone went over well with the young activists in his audience, said Thierry Dongala, a self-described political moderate who was at the conference representing Americans for Generational Equity.
"We don't like divisiveness. It doesn't ring well with us," Dongala said.
Whether the GOP can find the right tone and the right message to compete for the newest generation of voters may largely determine the party's competitiveness in the next decade or two.
The performance of the economy and the Obama administration will certainly be critical; Pew's recent poll found Americans under 30 being hit harder in key ways (jobs, paying the rent or mortgage) by the recession than older Americans.
"I don't think this is set in stone," pollster Keeter said of recent voting patterns among the young. But unless they change, he said, those trends "should be truly frightening to the Republican Party."
we need to emphasize that the GOP should cater more towards a youthful libertarian message. if the GOP trys to be more moderate with their platform to gain more votes, why cant they be more libertarian to gain more votes?