The New York Times is afraid that the Republican party is about to lose a generation. They cite a series of surveys through the years that show a decline in Republican voters in general and a sharp decline in young Republican voters in recent years.
I am always suspect of such surveys. Especially coming from the New York Times.
However, this reminded me of the article Meghan McCain did for The Daily Beast about how Republicans are not good with technology. "The Republican party isn't exactly Internet savvy," she said. Meghan blogged her father's campaign throughout the election.
Robert Stacy McCain seeks to disprove the NYTimes theory today with a series of photographs of young up and comers at CPAC. There are plenty of other young Republicans as well - Mary Katharine Ham for one. Go check out his photos of the faces of the future!
I disagree with the survey in general but don't disagree with the fact that Republicans should amp up the technology, and I think we are. There is a huge following on Twitter with the TCOT group - conservatives are making their presence known. One admirable thing about the Obama campaign was their web presence. Does this go hand in hand with the youth thing that NYTimes is referring to? Probably to a certain degree.
I don't think The Times should fret about us getting lost or dying out. We're here!
If you look over the years the trend to liberal and conservative is like a pendulum; it swings back and forth. It's funny in 92 the left was saying the right was dead and not coming back, because the country was tired of Republican rule (Regan and Bush 1), but in 94 the Republicans beat the Democrats big time to counter Clinton.
ReplyDeleteThen you could saw the trend start to go the other way in 2004,and it went solidly to the left in 2006.
There will always be political "poles" left and right, but in the middle is where the actual political swing vote happens. In a few years there probably will be Obama and Democrat fatigue (like there was Clinton fatigue and Bush fatigue) and the political mood in the middle will swing back to the right.
So don't believe it when you read one party is dying or dead.
Oh I think anyone would be a fool to discount the presence of the Republican party in this country!! Daddy and I were talking after the election that in reality - MOST elections were QUITE close - including the one btw Obama & McCain when you look at popular vote numbers. And that it historically shows that the country is pretty evenly divided -it's just the way the electoral votes look and the plays on the press of it to show "landslide" this or that. I truly believe that the Republican ideals are very very strong in the country and that you will historically see a need for change (not meant in the Obama slogan sense as much as always - generically) - that each party focuses on their agenda and then the country lacks in whatever that party didn't value as much - and it shows and we get this motivation to try something different. **shrug** I think in the end that's a good thing too! I also think Romney is the best option for 2012 for what I've seen so far and thought he'd have been a better option than McCain in 2008.
ReplyDeletethe technology thing - that's one place I'm hoping SGP is going to help take up the slack
ReplyDelete