Here's why the party of Old White People is feeling so panicky

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 11/10/08 at 12:05am

If only 18-29 year olds had voted last week, this is what the returns would have looked like.

The sense the GOP has that they are dinosaurs on the verge of extinction is totally accurate. This of course worries those of us who wonder what desperate measures they will take to hold onto the power that is slipping from their grasp.

The times they are a-changin', it's a blowin' in the wind.

Onward to the future!

[StickToPriest]

Posted: 11/10/08 at 12:10am

People try to put us d-down (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Just because we get around (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Things they do look awful c-c-cold (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
I hope I die before I get old (Talkin' 'bout my generation)

This is my generation
This is my generation, baby

Why don't you all f-fade away (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
And don't try to dig what we all s-s-say (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
I'm not trying to cause a big s-s-sensation (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
I'm just talkin' 'bout my g-g-g-generation (Talkin' 'bout my generation)

This is my generation
This is my generation, baby

Why don't you all f-fade away (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
And don't try to d-dig what we all s-s-say (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
I'm not trying to cause a b-big s-s-sensation (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
I'm just talkin' 'bout my g-g-generation (Talkin' 'bout my generation)

This is my generation
This is my generation, baby

People try to put us d-down (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Just because we g-g-get around (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Things they do look awful c-c-cold (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Yeah, I hope I die before I get old (Talkin' 'bout my generation)

This is my generation
This is my generation, baby

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 11/10/08 at 12:13am

That's by Bright Eyes or Dashboard Confessional or some other young performer of today, ain't it?

[StickToPriest]

Posted: 11/10/08 at 12:17am

I think it's a duet with Madonna and Britney. You should YouTube it!

But getting back on topic, I so hope this trend holds steady and that as my generation gets older many don't become more and more conservative. But even still, this really should make the GOP scared to death.

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 11/10/08 at 12:18am

Hey, for once I'm not embarrassed to be so young.

[JohnBoy2]

Posted: 11/10/08 at 12:25am

Here's why the party of Old White People is feeling so panicky

So you're feeling panicky, Namo?

[snl89]

Posted: 11/10/08 at 12:28am

*proud to be a 19 year old*




another "My Generation" song (the one by Emerson Hart):

You’re coming up like a flower
You’re coming up through the cracks that live ‘round here
Everybody know we have no fear

We are the wind of change coming
We take a stand where so many never go
We will shout it out to let you know
This is my generation

We want an answer to the questions
We want to knock down all the walls they built for you
We want to know the truth not be lied to

We want to know the face of freedom
We want to make a place where we can learn to love
Build a world that we can be proud of
This is my generation

Cause we just want to dance all night
Live inside the spark of life
This might be the only time around

Cause we just want to dance all night
Live inside the spark of life
This might be the only time around

You’re coming up like a flower
You’re coming up through the cracks that live ‘round here
Everybody knows we have no fear
This is our generation

Updated On: 11/10/08 at 12:28 AM

[BroomstickBoy]

Posted: 11/10/08 at 12:28am

"Hey, for once I'm not embarrassed to be so young."

You and me both Cats.

[verynewyorkcurious]

Posted: 11/10/08 at 1:48am

The old white people I know all voted for Obama. I guess I should mention that the only old white people I know live in the Tri-State area.

[Weez]

Posted: 11/10/08 at 7:16am

And this is partly the reason why I can't find it in myself to come down too hard on older bigots who are set in their ways. In twenty or thirty years, they'll have dropped dead, and look how awesome things should be then. :3

Although I still get worried that they'll manage to pass on their hatred before they go...

[somuchtodo]

Posted: 11/10/08 at 7:32am

An longer perspective:
I would like to see what this map looked like for the first Reagan election - after the turmoil and failure of the Carter years.
Is what you're seeing just the natural cycle of the young voter pushing back against the extremes?

[PalJoey]

Posted: 11/10/08 at 8:15am

They'll need a enemy to unite against.

They have met their enemy and they are us:

===

The Republican brand is still alive and well, Rep. Mike Pence said on Fox News Sunday.

When asked by Chris Wallace what "conservative solutions" the GOP would bring to their current minority-party status, Pence said social issues like "the sanctity of marriage" will remain the backbone of the Republican platform.

"You build those conservative solutions, Chris, on the same time-honored principles of limited government, a belief in free markets, in the sanctity of life, the sanctity of marriage," Pence said.

The Indiana representative cited the ballot measures against gay marriage that passed on Election Day as evidence of the continuing presence of conservative values.

"There were three state referendums on marriage ... all three carried. The vitality of the conservative movement around the country is very real," said Pence.
GOP leader: Rebuild party based on 'sanctity of marriage'

[colleen_lee]

Posted: 11/10/08 at 8:26am

Or could the GOP split into the two opposing segments they have become?

http://parentingbeyondbelief.com/blog/?p=1114

As the Right fights…
After dominating the country’s politics for years, the conservatives’ grip on power was quickly fading. The Chief Executive was already enormously unpopular when a financial tsunami struck. Over a million homeowners ended up in foreclosure. Unemployment soared. To avert economic disaster, the government poured billions into a bailout of the financial sector. But it was too late. In the next election, voters expressed their lost confidence in conservative leadership, and the liberals swept to power in a landslide victory.

You’d be forgiven for thinking I’m talking about the past two months in the US. In fact, I’m describing the UK in the 1990s. The British Conservative Party held the reins for 18 years, then was trounced by the liberal Labour Party—at which point the Conservatives went through a “struggle for the soul of the Party” — precisely what’s now happening in the U.S.

They eventually split into three factions: the centrist “One Nation” Conservatives, Free Market Conservatives, and The Cornerstone Group, social conservatives whose motto “Faith, Flag and Family” says it all.

Because compromise is a longstanding element of British politics (and British life in general), the three elements remain under a single party identity, struggling for dominance of the platform. But infighting among the factions is credited in part with keeping the Conservatives out of power for over a decade.

Republicans in the US have a similarly mix of the sane, the selfish, and the sanctimonious, and it’s becoming ever clearer that these bedfellows are heading into a bloody civil war. Because compromise is seen as weakness in American culture (and religion), I don’t see it ending in a three-winged party. The big red tent can no longer hold Colin Powell, Pat Robertson, George Will and Sarah Palin. I think the GOP will split in half. And (in case you were wondering about relevance) this will open a completely new way of looking ideology in the US—including religion.

The new parties:

THE NEW REPUBLICAN PARTY (NRP)
The New Republicans are intelligent advocates of small government, limited social engineering, and fiscal conservatism. They are furious at having their party hijacked by the mindless lunatic fringe and their moralistic obsessions. The NRP will merge with Libertarians to revive Goldwater Republicanism.

THE CHRISTIAN AMERICA PARTY (CAP)
Populist, anti-intellectual, ultra-nationalist and über-religious, The CAP will finally have a party unfettered by compromise. Informed by American exceptionalism and fundamentalist Christianity, it will be in essence an American fascist party.

I use “fascist” here not as a cheap epithet but as a literal political descriptor. The historian Robert Paxton defines fascism as “a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.”

Political theorist Roger Griffin adds that “The core mobilizing myth of fascism which conditions its ideology, propaganda, style of politics and actions is the vision of the nation’s imminent rebirth from decadence.” A perfect description of the Religious Right.

The Christian Americans will front a candidate for President in 2012 by the name of Sarah Palin.

Freed from the unwieldy social obsessions of the Religious Right, the New Republicans will have more in common with Democrats — not everything, but more — than with the Christian America Party. It would be in the interest of the Dems to work with the NRP to keep the CAP from exerting undue influence.

But if Democrats have become too blindly allergic to the word “Republican,” they may fail to recognize the transformation of the Republican brand, driving the NRP back into the arms of the Religious Right. Which would be bad.

And now the point.

This new fault line in American politics might help dissolve another strained coalition in American life: the big tent of religious faith. Progressive religious believers have long been uncomfortable with those on the wingnut fringe of their worldview but are often compelled to defend “faith” in general because they are under that same big tent. That has made bridge-building between the nonreligious and progressively religious difficult. And that’s a shame, because as I never tire of pointing out, liberal religionists have much more in common with secularists on a wide range of issues and attitudes than they do with fundamentalism.

As Bruce Bawer (author of Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity) has noted,

theological liberals of every denomination have found that they have more in common with one another than with the conservatives in their own denominations. Responding to the research of biblical scholars and the ”historical Jesus” movement, they have de-emphasized doctrine.

Meanwhile leaders of the religious right have preached that salvation depends on believing the correct dogma, even as they have succeeded in reducing the considerable doctrinal distinctions that once divided evangelicals, fundamentalists and charismatics.

As a result, American Protestantism is in the midst of a major shift. It is being split into two nearly antithetical religions, both calling themselves Christianity.

These two religions — the Church of Law, based in the South, and the Church of Love, based in the North — differ on almost every big theological point.

I would simply add that Bawer’s “Church of Love” also has much more in common with the nonreligious than with the “Church of Law.”

You can see this in my August post about the Belief-o-Matic Quiz. A secular humanist shows a 60-75 percent overlap with mainstream-to-liberal Christians, while an evangelical shows only a 20-40 percent overlap with mainstream-to-liberal Christians.

The coming fracture on the right can help to isolate and more clearly define the anti-intellectual, fundamentalist side of religious expression in the US. I think that now is the time for the nonreligious to get over our allergy to the word “religion”—to begin opening dialogues and building bridges of common interest and common values with the sizeable non-insane segment of religious believers in this country.

[best12bars]

Posted: 11/10/08 at 8:39am

I didn't realize if you're 30, you're an "old white guy."

What is this, Logan's Run?




And those 30-35-year-old "old white guys" not seen on that board won't be dying out for another half century. Not exactly right around the corner.

Updated On: 11/10/08 at 08:39 AM

[madbrian]

Posted: 11/10/08 at 8:41am

As an Old White Guy, I take offense at using that name for the Republicans.

[JohnBoy2]

Posted: 11/10/08 at 9:02am

I wouldn't get too excited. This is the breakdown in that age group, for every presidential election. Most Republicans started out as Democrats.

[nygrl232]

Posted: 11/10/08 at 9:07am

The sanctity of marriage?

That's the funniest damn thing I've read in a while. I'm sure these dudes are very sanctimonious towards their wives. They don't cheat on them or nothin'. Ever ever.

[best12bars]

Posted: 11/10/08 at 9:09am

They meant to say the skanktity of marriage.

[Unknown User]

Posted: 11/10/08 at 10:18am

AS a part of the generation that turned right and started this mess, I';m glad to see kids today have more sense.

[Mistress Overdone]

Posted: 11/10/08 at 10:29am

I so hope this trend holds steady and that as my generation gets older many don't become more and more conservative.

Conservatism does not have to equal closed-mindedness. I for one am very friendly to the idea of old-school conservatism, which means fiscal responsibility and small government. The less the government legislates the lives of its people, the better. While the Republican party has wandered pretty far from these conservative ideals (legislating morality, spending sprees with taxpayer money), being conservative is not in and of itself a bad thing.
Updated On: 11/10/08 at 10:29 AM

[PalJoey]

Posted: 11/10/08 at 10:37am

What a fascinating article, Colleen. Thanks!

[Auggie27]

Posted: 11/10/08 at 10:57am

Make no mistake -- they've taken a good look at what happened with the Prop 8 debacle and will fire up the base with it. It's now perceived as still-viable wedge issue. They have nothing to play, having utterly failed with every pressing concern of the American people. Rather than mark the death of Rovian tactics, it may herald their re-invention: Rove 2.0 could as toxic and lethal as the first, though perhaps more subtly applied.

[RadiGal2]

Posted: 11/10/08 at 1:00pm

You know my staging office for Get Out The Vote was in Mesa. Look it up sometime. Home of no property tax, no public libraries, the 6th most 'conservative' city in the country...and for sure the largest in Arizona. My office was chock full of white hair ladies madly knocking, calling and dragging voters to the polls. Additionally, I have to say we had the happiest most cupcake filled best fed volunteers in all of Arizona. So yes we would have won more states, but the hearts and minds that were touched by this election were amazing. I had so many amazing encounters last weekend. One lady stands out in particular she came out of the office from Day One tears welled up in her eyes from the emotion, she'd never ever been involved in politics before but she was so proud to help out and (in her words) ashamed to be represented by someone who fostered fear and discord McCain -- Barack just *has* to win, he's the real thing.

I have to say -- I'll take those moments, and that conversation over the overwhelming youth vote any day.