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.
In a way, these figures should make small-government conservatives a lot more nervous than they make partisan Republicans. After all, you can win an awful lot of elections just by mobilizing the over-65 constituency — they’re well-informed, they turn out to vote, and there are more of them every day. But the easiest way to do it, as the Democrats proved for years and years and years, is to defend Medicare and Social Security like McAuliffe at Bastogne. This means that while the energy of activists may be pushing the Republicans to the right on size-of-government issues, the concerns of their central constituency could end up pulling them inexorably leftward on entitlements. (There’s a reason that even South Carolina’s Jim DeMint, in the midst of a CPAC stemwinder, paused to allow that one of the things government “has” to do is “keep our promises to our seniors.”)
This wouldn’t be a terrible thing if Social Security and (especially) Medicare accounted for, say, ten percent of the federal budget. But where the size of government — and if we ever want to cut the deficit, the burden of taxation — is concerned, they’ll be the whole ballgame soon enough. And if the Republican Party depends too heavily on over-65 voters for its political viability, we could easily end up with a straightforwardly big-government party in the Democrats, and a G.O.P. that wins election by being “small government” on the small stuff (earmarks, etc.) while refusing to even consider entitlement reform. That’s a recipe for one of two things: Either the highest taxes in American history and a federal government that climbs inexorably toward 30 percent of G.D.P., or a Greece or California-style disaster.
In the long run, contra Ross, this is a disaster not just for small-government conservatives but for the GOP as well. Their earlier embrace of social fundamentalism was largely responsible for driving away young voters in the first place, and now, left only with a core of middle-aged and elderly voters that they need to keep loyal, they’re likely to pursue policies that push the young even further away. This might produce occasional victories, but no political party can survive this kind of vicious cycle in the long run. Having long since alienated blacks, Hispanics, and virtually the entire Northeast, Republicans can hardly afford to permanently lose young voters as well. The white South and the elderly just aren’t enough to sustain a national party.
Andrew Sullivan follows Drum:
But they are enough to sustain a cable news channel. Keep riding that Ailes tiger, guys. He’s already told us what his core principle is: ratings, not conservatism.
Larison’s analysis fails in one respect; the idea that the Millenials will always vote Democratic because they have attached themselves to the Democratic party and their voting habits become “predictable.” The survey Larison references, in fact, shows a growing comfort with conservatism the older one gets.
The Democrats feel they have a chance to cement the loyalty of Millenials to their party by passing national health insurance. Perhaps the “right bill” might have done so, but the monstrosity that has come forth will almost certainly drive them away from the party or, at least, make them so cynical that they drop out of the voting process altogether. The entire burden in the current health insurance plan falls on the youngest wage earners. Once they get wise to that, I suspect they won’t like it much at all and will be looking for someone to blame.
Larison’s point, then, has some deficiencies but its thrust is correct; the current state of Millenial attraction to movement conservatism is very weak and may get weaker over time. Obviously, the conservatives will never abandon their anti-gay marriage stance (and the perception that this makes them bigots plays a significant role in the standoffishness of Millenials), nor is the right likely to move away from the pro-life position – a stance that drives away Millenial women in droves. (While the numbers may be near equal, better educated and wealthier Millenial women are more pro choice.)
Perhaps social upheaval caused by a significant economic downturn would shunt social issues like gay marriage and abortion to the sidelines enough that a conservative economic populist message would resonate more with the Millenials. Then there’s always the chance that they might go the opposite way and embrace more liberal solutions. Given the fact that neither side will change their base conclusions about social issues, something along those lines would appear to be the only real chance to cause the Millenials to give conservatism another look.
Andrew Romano in Newsweek:
Enter Ron Paul, or at least the political undercurrent he represents. If Republicans were to inject a little dose of libertarianism into their personae and platforms–especially now–I suspect it would go a long way toward broadening their appeal to younger voters. I’m not saying the GOP needs to become an army of Ayn Rand revolutionaries or anything. Simply imagine a candidate who stressed three things: 1) fiscal discipline, 2) military skepticism, and 3) laissez-faire social policy. Simply imagine a candidate who stressed three things: 1) fiscal discipline, 2) military skepticism, and 3) laissez-faire social policy. He would support anti-earmark efforts, but recognize them for what they are: tinkering around the edges. The real budget-balancing and right-sizing would revolve around reforming Medicare (which will face a $52 trillion shortfall will be short $52 trillion of what it promises to pay retirees and current workers within five years) and Social Security (which has already run through its surplus)—programs expected to leap from 8.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) to 18.6 percent of GDP as the boomers retire over the next few decades. Rep. Paul Ryan is one of the few Republicans to approach this problem seriously. In regard to the military, our imaginary candidate would resist the temptation to position himself, in Larison’s words, as one of those “people who are furious with ‘big government’ for excessive spending but who simultaneously have no problem vesting the same government with virtually limitless power to seize, detain, wiretap, attack and kill just about anyone it wants to target.” And he’d be unconcerned with forcing children to pray in public schools or refusing gays the right to marry, even if he happened to be a Christian himself.
The basic idea is less government, more liberty, which is far more consistent than the GOP’s current platform—and has the added bonus of being far more appealing to the (largely anti-Bush) Millennial Generation as well. As compared to the average American voter, Millennials are less willing to agree that military strength is the best way to ensure peace (52–42 overall vs. 38–58 for Millennial). They are more liberal in their views on family, homosexuality, and civil liberties (especially as compared to the Silent Generation). And they are identical on questions about whether “it is the responsibility of the government to take care of people who can’t take care of themselves,” which suggests that with old age still half a century away—and with the Boomers threatening to bankrupt the country—they’d see entitlement reform less as a threat than as a precaution. What’s more, “while the Democratic Party has a larger advantage among Millennials than it does among the two oldest cohorts, a greater proportion of the party’s support comes from people who do not explicitly identify as Democrats but only lean toward the party.” They’re Independents, in other words. They could be convinced.
EARLIER: The Yoots Do Not Give Two Hoots About The GOP
