Bush Failing To Attract Young Republicans?
Hmm…
Aug. 7 (Bloomberg) — President George W. Bush’s hopes of attracting a new generation of voters to the Republican Party may be fading, as younger Americans are far more critical of his job performance than the broader population.
A Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll of Americans age 18 to 24 found Bush’s approval rating was 20 percent, with 53 percent disapproving and 28 percent with no opinion. That compares to a 40 percent approval rating among Americans of all ages in a separate Bloomberg/Times poll.
Much like Franklin Roosevelt attracted a new generation of voters with the New Deal, Bush and his administration have had high hopes of drawing younger voters to his party. He has sought to do that through policy initiatives aimed at creating an “ownership society,” and public relations tactics like a Youth Convention at the party’s 2004 national convention, in which his twin daughters took the stage.
Among the initiatives aimed at drawing a new generation into the Republican fold are health-care savings accounts, elimination of the so-called marriage penalty in the U.S. tax code, and Bush’s proposal to create private investment accounts from a portion of Social Security payroll taxes. `Younger Americans really want to see some leadership,” Bush said last year as he launched his Social Security plan.
Instead, the Social Security initiative flopped in Congress after attracting criticism from the public and lawmakers of both parties, and health-care savings accounts haven’t done much to expand coverage, with only about 1 percent of the U.S. population currently participating in them.
A couple of things…
First, the younger generations tend not to be very conservative. At 26 I think I’m something of an exception to that rule. When you’re young and just coming out from under your parent’s wing it’s easy to view political matters through the filter of the child/parent relationship. The tenets of liberalism which hold that citizens, by merely existing, are entitled to certain things like health care, welfare and prescription drugs at the taxpayer’s expense are easy to swallow when you’re young and dumb. After all, what twenty-year-old doesn’t walk around with the sort of petulant attitude that leads them to believe that the world owes them something?
Usually most people grow out of this and realize that the only thing the government owes us is a safe society where we are each, individually, free to leverage our brains, muscles and talent to be as successful as we want to be. Those that don’t usually become Democrats.
Second, there probably are a lot of citizens in the younger generations who are upset about the Bush administration’s failures on certain “ownership society” promises, but despite what some would have you believe that is no victory for liberalism. The Democrats fought long and hard against any sort of Social Security reform. Unless something is done soon it will likely be the citizens of my generation who end up getting suckered on the deal when the program eventually collapses under it’s own weight. Or when taxes are jacked up to keep it solvent.
I think many in the younger generations (those who are paying attention anyway) are probably very upset at the failure of Social Security reform and probably blame Bush for it’s failure. Which is too bad, because it was the Demcorats (aided by a handful of Republicans) who killed it.
