Checking out the white Bro Vote
by digby
Alex Pareene points out one of the more inconvenient findings in the new Pew Poll about the “liberal” millenials. It depends on which millenials you’re talking about:
The Republican Party will need to [become less conservative] to survive. Most of the serious members of the party know that. But they are also asking themselves exactly how long they can hold out. It might be a bit longer than this report suggests.
There is still a strong attitude divide among millenials along racial lines. A majority of white millennials disapprove of Barack Obama, a majority of white millennials think government should be smaller and provide fewer services, a majority of white millennials think the government has no responsibility to provide health insurance for all (white millennials are even a tad more conservative on this one than the oldest, most conservative group in Pew’s report). On most of these issues, the white millennials are more liberal than older whites — and the millennial generation is less white than prior generations — but the racial divide that defines our politics stubbornly remains.
Now the numbers are the number sand the fact remains that there will be fewer of these conservative white people than there has been in the past. But it’s still quite a large faction.
Pareene thinks that because many of these conservatives are dovish libertarian types that the GOP just needs to become less hawkish to keep them. I wrote about this yesterday — I don’t actually think the GOP needs to become less hawkish. I think all these white libertarians who hate taxes and love their guns will happily toe the line when their own “enemies” present themselves. Why do I think this? Because it’s happened before. There have always been times when foreign affairs were of little concern, even among the hawkish conservatives — until something happened.
Worry about foreign policy, international relations or war is almost totally missing from the forefront of American concerns today. This stands in sharp contrast to many other periods since World War II when foreign policy issues dominated the public’s responses to this most important problem question. In the early 1950s, the Korean War was the nation’s top problem. The threat of war, nuclear proliferation and communism dominated in the mid to late 1950s, and into the 1960s. The Vietnam War moved to the forefront of the public’s concerns in 1965, and remained a dominant problem well into the early 1970s. War and peace issues also were highly likely to be top-of-mind through the mid-Reagan years of the 1980s, and again in 1990 and 1991 at the time of the Gulf War tensions. Today, in an environment in which communism as a threat has essentially evaporated, only 4% of Americans mention international issues or foreign affairs concerns in response to the most important problem question.
I just have a feeling that the libertarian “bros” will fall in line when they’re needed by the coalition. They’re Republicans, which means that they’ve knowingly joined the more warmongering, anti-abortion party. And that’s because what they really care about is a laissez-faire, low tax agenda which they are required to fatuously proclaim as the ultimate definition of “freedom”. After all, if they really cared about staying out of foreign wars, they’d logically join the Party that at least boasts a majority of anti-war elected leaders and has a long-standing faction of committed anti-war activists and voters.
(ICYWW, in the Senate 21 Democrats voted against the resolution. All Republicans voted for it, along with a bunch of cowardly Dems who wanted to run for president.)
I just have a feeling these millenial libertarian Paul followers will be happy to wave the patriot flag when the hawks begin to shriek. Defending your country against the foreign boogeyman is so much more satisfying to a macho believer in “liberty” than impotently shaking your fists at IRS clerks and health care providers.
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