There Are Young Republicans... Really

A few days ago Chris Hayes interviewed (above) Alex Smith, national Chair of the College Republican National Committee, an arm of the NRC. He found it interesting that her group spent a great deal of money on an indepth survey and analysis that basically proves her party is alienating young voters at a faster and faster rate. Not just alienating them-- but making them positively loath the party. "Our focus on taxation and business issues," warns the report, "has left many young voters thinking they will only reap the benefits of Republican policies if they become wealthy or rise to the top of a big business. We've become the party that will pat you on your back when you make it, but won't offer a hand to help you get there." When asked for the best way to describe the Republican Party the most common phrases young voters came up with were "close-minded." racist," "rigid," "old-fashioned." Igor Volsky at Think Progress analyzed he analysis. Short version: the College Republicans could have saved there money and spent more effectively on paying college students to not vote.

[A] close reading of the 90-page report finds that young people have strong disagreements with Republican policies-- including large parts of former candidate’s Mitt Romney’s platform-- and are far more likely to support progressive positions. Here are 11 examples:

1. GOP economic polices are to blame for the recession. “Although ‘Republican economic policies’ is the factor least likely to be viewed as playing a major role in causing the crisis, this is mostly due to young Republicans in the sample hesitating to pin blame directly on their own party, and an outright majority of young people still think those Republican policies are to blame-- hardly an encouraging finding.”

2. Lower taxes will not create jobs. "In the August 2012 XG survey, there was not a strong consensus around the virtues of lowering taxes and regulations on business. Only 34% of respondents in that survey thought they’d be better off if the corporate tax rate were lowered, and only 36% thought such a move would make it easier for young people to get jobs."

3. Increase taxes on the wealthy. “Perhaps most troubling for Republicans is the finding from the March 2013 CRNC survey that showed 54% of young voters saying ‘taxes should go up on the wealthy,’ versus 31% who say “taxes should be cut for everyone.”

4. End the attacks on women’s reproductive health. “[T]he issue of protecting life has been conflated with issues around the definition of rape, funding for Planned Parenthood, and even contraception. In the words of one female participant in our Hispanic voter focus group in Orlando, “I think Romney wanted to cut Planned Parenthood. And he supports policies where it would make it harder for a woman to get an abortion should she choose, even if it were medically necessary. That goes head in hand with redefining rape.”

5. Expand universal health care coverage. “Many of the young people in our focus groups noted that they thought everyone in America should have access to health coverage. In the Spring 2012 Harvard Institute of Politics survey of young voters, 44% said that “basic health insurance is a right for all people, and if someone has no means of paying for it, the government should provide it.” … As one participant in our focus group of young men in Columbus put it, “at least Obama was making strides to start the process of reforming health care.”

6. Provide comprehensive immigration reform. “The position taken most frequently by young voters was that “illegal immigrants should have a path to earn citizenship,” chosen by 35% of respondents… Some 19% chose “illegal immigrants should be deported or put in jail for breaking the law,” while another 17% took the position that “illegal immigrants should have a path to legal status but not citizenship.”

7. Cut the defense budget first. “Indeed, a large number of respondents pointed to the defense budget as the place where cuts should start. In the survey, 35% of respondents thought that “we should have a smaller defense budget and leaner military,” including 49% of young independents.”

8. Democrats are more responsive on student loans. “Many focus group members did think that Democrats were responding to the student loan crisis. “I think they’re more in tune to what we need right now with student loans, getting a job, fixing the housing market and the environment,” observed one participant from Orlando, with another adding that he had “heard Obama once say, oh, he has student loans, he went to school, he knows what we’re going through.”

9. Climate change is real. “Ultimately, while voters may say they are concerned about climate change, they rarely list it among the issues on the top of their minds.”

10. Bush’s wars blew up the deficit. “The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan themselves, however, were largely viewed as having been a net negative for the U.S. In fact, during focus group discussions about the recession, one respondent said she felt that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had contributed in part to the economic crisis.”

11. Marriage equality for all. “Surveys have consistently shown that gay marriage is not as important an issue as jobs and the economy to young voters. Yet it was unmistakable in the focus groups that gay marriage was a reason many of these young voters disliked the GOP.”

Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson also went through the analysis with a fine tooth comb. Hos most notable conclusion: "It is not that young voters are enamored of the Democratic Party. They simply dislike the Republican Party more."

And when younger voters-- not counting young neo-Nazis or young racists-- wind up liking a Republican-- invariably a libertarian type-- the Republican Establishment can't figure out how to deal with that person. Justin Amash (R-MI)-- often dubbed "the new Ron Paul"-- has a following among young conservatives. So Boehner kicked him off all his committees to teach him a lesson about being more of the kind of a Republican zombie that young people despise. Only 8 Republicans bucked Boehner and Cantor to vote against the Republican plan to double the interest rate on student loans-- and most of them are far right fanatics (like Louie Gohmert, Tom Cotton, Tom Graves and Marlin Stutzman) voted no because they thought the Republican policy wasn't harsh enough!

Most young voters see this is a typical Republican