GOP and Young People

Young voters went 66% for President Obama last year. As you might expect, for Hope and Change are the very life-blood of youth. What's not to like?

Well, here's what. An agenda of mandatory health insurance, cap-and-trade, and tax increases is not going to do much to help young people get a start in life. Not when young people are forced to pay for grandma's health care, high energy prices, and taxes to keep powerful interests in clover.

With that sort of agenda, young people are likely to stay unemployed well into the 2010s.

Maybe young people should reconsider their support for Obama. Maybe you already are. Maybe you are really natural Republicans, if only you knew.

So let's go over the issues one by one. And the best way to do that is with the ten points of the new GOP Purity Test being floated by some Republican National Committee members. We will look at each point in turn, and leave out the "Whereas's."

1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill;

Obviously you young people like the government spending money on education. But I wonder if you realize that all that money is not for you, but for the vast education blob. You'd do much better if you had the money to spend yourself, rather than have the government spend it on educational bureaucracy.

(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare;

You do realize, don't you, that the central policy change in ObamaCare is to force young people to get health insurance and to force young people to pay much more for health insurance than at present? The idea is to get young people to help pay for all the health subsidies that the government will be handing out to its supporters.

(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;

I know you chaps believe in saving the planet, but you do realize, don't you, that cap-and-trade is going to make it harder for you to build a career, start a family, and buy a house. Because when you make energy more expensive you make everything more expensive, and that hurts young people just starting out.

(4) We support workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check;

Helping unions win elections is great if you want to go and work for the DMV and be a bump on a log for the rest of your life. It will make it harder for people without political connections. That usually includes young people.

(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;

Everyone is in favor of immigration and assimilation, but not when it threatens their job. Since young people are typically the least experienced and the lower paid, you are the most at risk when illegal immigrants are competing for low-skill low-paid jobs,

(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;

I can understand that many young people might not like America's wars. After all, it's young men that have to fight them and die in them. But someone has to do it, and we honor those young men and women that do.

(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;

Young people have supported the elimination of nuclear weapons in the past. It would be wonderful to have a world of Kant's Eternal Peace. But what do you do if Iran and North Korea have nuclear weapons? You gotta contain them, right?

(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;

Gays have done a pretty good job persuading young people that relationships are relationships, and when people love each other... I'd just like to say this. As a man, I appreciate that the more heterosexual marriage is deprecated, the easier it is for us men to prey on young women. The most powerful thing a woman has going for her is the right to say No.

(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing, denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and

The thing about abortion is that the people most in favor of it are young men. I wonder why?

(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership;

Well, we conservatives have a thing about this. I suppose because it's symbolic. It says we are not completely dominated by government and its all-enveloping rules and regulations. it's a fantasy, of course. The government could round us all up tomorrow if it felt like it. But it's nice to dream.

It's funny how young people have tended to support the left over the years when their economic interests so clearly require an open and competitive marketplace. Perhaps young people like the left because it seems to offer a security blanket against a cruel hard world with promises of equality, care and compassion.

The only problem, of course, is that the only way you can get care and compassion is in free relationship with others. Government doesn't do care and compassion. Government is force.

Youth of America, Unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.