I agree. The problem conservatives have at the moment, is that young folks recoil from us and our message. Rush Limbaugh is, to them, a tedious windbag. Sean Hannity is not worth their notice. (I tend to agree with them.....) The political pronouncements of the "Evangelical" movement play well to evangelicals, but the "young people" demographic is extremely suspicious of evangelicals, who they see (often with justification) as hypocritical, smug, and unreasonably judgmental.
We need a different way of reaching them in a way that makes them think, without being repulsive. Jon Stewart is a lefty, but he's actually a good model for how to fold a political view into an entertainment venue; and the old Saturday Night Live of the late '70s was actually a very effective means of showing the problems with Carterism. I'd bet that a good many young conservatives got their first nudge from SNL's send-ups of Jimmy Carter....
I think we also need a conservative medium that goes into real depth on issues; you'd be surprised at how many young folks are actually paying attention to NPR's news segments. We have no corresponding medium -- why not?
We also tend to forget that younger folks have grown up in an environment where "being mean" is among the greatest sins. We also tend to ignore that there can often be valid moral considerations behind what they consider to be "mean." And we must acknowledge that conservatives have done a good job of helping the media paint them as mean -- we often reject things out of hand, and thus ignore valid moral issues; when in fact we should address the issues more carefully, and present our views in a more palatable way.
For example, abortion is wrong -- we agree on that; but the other side of the argument usually focuses on the plight of the woman who is considering abortion, and says we're "mean" for opposing her "right" to abortion. Unfortunately, the "mean" argument has been extremely effective. So what do we do about it? First, we cannot retreat on the fact that abortion is wrong; but we need to recognize that the pregnant woman has problems, too; and that our solutions must also, somehow, address those difficulties in a manner that doesn't simply dismiss or condemn her problems.
IMO, the way to do that is to rediscover our principles on spending—I can’t imagine most young people are thrilled about paying $20 trillion in debt down the road.
We can certainly rediscover our principles on spending; but we cannot forget how Newt Gingrich led the Republicans to disaster on that point (e.g., the Medicare Reform mess back in '95). Where Newt failed was in assuming that he could simply say "we're reforming it," and that everybody would nod and accept it. He did not have a realistic assessment of where people were at that point, and Clinton took full advantage of it. We have to build and propagate a solid intellectual foundation so that people really understand our principles as something other than stunts.
And younger voters may become more politicized as they find the job market more difficult and their tax bills rising as they are forced to support an overburdened social welfare system.
well, if we had a few billionaires willing to spend some money we could have a conservative cable channel.... or a couple million conservatives giving a few dollars a week might do the trick. conservatives won't do it..... ....... but conservatives don't protest either