Entirely Different Today – the Grand OLD Party

As much as the Democrats cannot get their platform together, progressives versus traditionalists, whatever else is said and done, the Republicans are even more divided. At first blush, it seems that we have a battle of old-line GOP traditionalists – pro-business, anti-regulation and pro-lower taxes, defense and police oriented, willing to give on social issues they consider secondary to get more support for their attempt to reduce that role of government in our lives – and a populist, anti-immigrant, anti-diversity, anti-globalist, swamp-draining constituency that wants to push the United States back into a world of high-paying blue collar jobs and white Protestant dominance. At first blush.

But when you drill down into the hard numbers, look at the BIG change a-coming for the GOP, it’s pretty clear that the concerns of upcoming generations of conservative Americans bear little or no resemblance to the values of their elders, on either side of the seeming Republican traditionalist-populist gap. For one thing, younger conservatives grew up after the Cold War, after Vietnam and after China seemed like a pretty ordinary success story. They also grew up in a vastly more urbanized and ethnically diverse America, most having some college in their backgrounds. They are less religious, for the most part, and more tolerant of “personal differences” (a bit more libertarian) than their elders, they believe in man-induced climate change and they absolutely know that the world is not returning to the era of high-paying, middle class blue collar jobs. Sure there are extremists in this cadre of young Republicans, but the majority are really more pragmatic than their elders.

Jonah Goldberg, writing for the May 15^th Los Angeles Times, was taken with one particular analysis of this accelerating generational change: “In the Weekly Standard, Ben Shapiro has a fascinating essay on the profound divide between young and old on the right. Older conservatives are almost unanimous in their support of Donald Trump’s presidency. Meanwhile, a staggering 82% of Republican and Republican-leaning 18- to 24-year-olds want Trump to be challenged for the nomination in 2020, while 74% of Republicans over 65 don’t. Sizable majorities of GOP voters between the ages of 24 and 44 also want a primary challenge.

“Shapiro argues persuasively that young conservatives care about character and values, while older ones have largely abandoned such concerns, preferring policy victories and perceived wins in the war on political correctness.

“What explains the opposing visions? Part of it, Shapiro writes, is the usual tendency of young people to gravitate toward libertarianism and idealism.

“But there’s another reason: Young people understand that some of the things old people see as ‘political correctness’ aren’t necessarily the product of a Marxist virus that somehow escaped a laboratory at Berkeley. Some of it reflects an attempt to craft decent manners in the increasingly diverse and egalitarian society that young people actually live in…

“As the pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson notes, also in the Standard, the GOP has a grave problem with younger voters in part because it is almost wholly dependent on white voters, and white Americans represent an ever-shrinking slice of the youth vote, which will only become more important as the baby boomers throw off this mortal coil.

“If the GOP has any hope of winning over non-conservative younger voters, it will be because young conservatives continue to break with their traditional role as dutiful soldiers for their movement’s elders.”

It seems unlikely that either political party is dealing with this shift in voter realities. The younger voters just grew up in a different world with different cultural values than did their parents and grandparents. The two main parties have split into factions of seemingly irreconcilable internal differences, and overall, the United States is deeply and seeming irretrievably polarized, more than at any time since our pre-Civil War days.

Upward mobility and expecting a better life than one’s parents are no longer the rule. Fear of the future, facing job-killing automation and killing financial burden in life, define the new America. If there is the slightest hope for an American reunification, it lies in the X and Y generations, who increasingly express disdain for the mainstream parties that do not represent their fears, hopes or dreams. Both the Republicans and the Democrats desperately need a wake-up call. They just do not seem to be able to get there.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it terrifies me that my son and his children will continue to live in a world where a great nation is simply breaking up and falling apart… while voters seem only able to accelerate our downfall.