Posted on 07/14/2014 6:21:19 AM PDT by Kaslin
This week another Reason/Rupe poll came out, this one on the political leanings of my generation, the Millennials. One interesting thing to note for people concerned with how we vote is that a plurality of Millennials surveyed who described themselves as “liberal” express support for downright libertarian positions.
Liberal, to many Millennials (33 percent), just means belief in “social tolerance, openness, and personal freedom.” And far from preferring a leviathan state, many Millennials said they were liberal because people should have freedom to do what they want in their personal lives without government interference.
So how does that impact our voting? More liberal millennials than conservative ones indicated support for a classically “libertarian-leaning candidate,” by a margin of 60 to 27 percent. But nearly half of conservative millennials oppose a “fiscally conservative, socially liberal” candidate.
Here’s the deal. Conservative Millennials won’t vote for a Democrat. They especially won’t vote for any of the Democrats being floated. But what this poll is showing is that liberal Millennials are fed up with a Democratic party which has been anything but liberal. Consider that 60 percent of Hillary Clinton voters and 56 percent of those who approve of President Obama say they would support a fiscally conservative, socially liberal candidate. They’re open to free markets, as long as they get their personal freedoms.
In total, a majority—53 percent—of millennials say they would support a candidate who described him or herself as socially liberal and economically conservative.
So what does that mean?
Young people were key to Obama’s election and re-election. Ignoring their wishes not only harms the GOP now, but also going forward.
Traditionally, the GOP has had an all-too-testy relationship with its libertarian wing. Mediaite’s Andrew Kirell:
To wit: There’s the GOP’s historically poor convention treatment of Paul supporters; the incessant scapegoating of Libertarian candidates for GOP losses, even despite mathematical impossibility; the perpetual misunderstanding of what libertarians believe in; the conservative belittling of libertarian causes; the penchant for selecting terrible candidates and then getting pissy when libertarians hesitate to get behind the false choice; and plenty of embarrassing moves that make libertarians want to crawl under a rock.
The personal freedoms we Millennials want in no way violate small-government principles. In fact, they are full expressions of that idea that that government which governs least, governs best. Ending the War on Drugs, fixing our broken immigration system, no longer allowing the state to discriminate against gays in marriage, reining in domestic spying, and protecting whistleblowers are all, fundamentally, small-government positions which would all result in a net decrease in the state.
Nominating truly small-government politicians, who want the government out of the bedroom and the boardroom, isn’t just the only principled path forward for the GOP. It’s also the best way to attract my generation to the party. It’s the GOP, not the Democrats, who Millennials should associate with “social tolerance, openness, and personal freedom.”
“One cannot be socially liberal on the policy side whilst being fiscally conservative. These are diametrically opposed philosophies.”
Bingo!
Open borders = Millions of unskilled morons that don’t speak English with 8 kids drawing welfare.
The Libtardians will say...Oh, but we want to end welfare. Like that would ever happen.
In order to be socially liberal the policy maker has to extract largesse from the public coffer to promote said socially liberal programs.
How does, for example, "stop arresting people for selling, buying, or using marijuana" require extracting largesse from the public coffer?
Contrast the article in this thread (the one we are commenting on) with this: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3179982/posts and you will see the ring of truth to the rest of my original post on this thread.
Millenials appear to have no clue!
Your example is a non-sequitur. Not enforcing laws does not extract money from the coffer, but enforcing bad law or perceived bad law does. On that front we should be repealing bad law because it runs afoul of good common sense.
Whatever side of the drug legalization fence you sit on, there are real social impacts either way. Uniform law applied in a non-uniform matter tends to de-emphasize the propriety or lack thereof WRT laws.
The surest way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it vigorously.
False, social liberalism makes small government impossible.
The key to smaller government is who gave it to us in the first place and fights for it today, social conservatives.
Social liberals are overwhelmingly liberal voters.
Funny someone just mentioned you. LOL
Unfortunately we have libertarians trying to convince conservatives to move left and become more liberal, and it is being done by people called “libertarian”, not conservative, and for a reason.
“How does, for example, “stop arresting people for selling, buying, or using marijuana” require extracting largesse from the public coffer?”
Someone has to support the dopers, and that falls on those who work for a living.
Case in point...The Washington state moron who was on TV bragging how he bought the first legal sack of dope. He was promptly fired from his job.
But he said it was worth it to be the 1st legal pothead!
“Most that I know”.
Yet the actual libertarian position is open borders and we know why, all they care about are money issues and promoting some fantasy that social liberalism and open borders lead to right wing voters who will fight for smaller government, and that the way to defend America is to lose the ability to defend it.
Wow, going personal already?
So yes, if one considers socialized medicine as a Socially Liberal issue (as I do) support for it runs diectly counter to Fiscal Conservatism.
Which illustrates pretty well how fluid and complex the language of political and ideological differences has become. Essentially we’re defining ourselves and each other by simplistic labels that really don’t express how close together or wide apart we can be on specific issues.
Talk to someone who respects your kind.
Leaving off the part where he’s now on welfare until he can find a new job. Which given his new notariety may be a long time.
Are you under the impression that FR is no longer conservative and is now libertarian, and so we conservatives cannot challenge what is presented in this article of how Millennials are too liberal for conservatism and are more liberation?
This is what we see from liberals, rinos, romneybots, Paulites, and libertarians, that now the conservatives at this conservative site, are the problem.
Social liberalism only creates more liberal voters and reduces the pool of conservative voters.
LOL, purely personal.
The bottom line is very few companies will employ those that use drugs, their insurance companies would charge double.
The reason companies can’t fill jobs is they can’t find job seekers that can pass a whiz-quiz.
All we have to do is look at which lever Millennials pull when they are in the voting booth, and it isn’t against the left.
That is the libertarian argument, for us to join the left in social liberalism, and the parties fight over taxes, which is very close to the traditional rino position.
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