The Republican Party’s Geriatric Trap

[wvit1001]

David Frum has an essay in Foreign Affairs laying out his view of how the Republican Party must change in order to regain parity at the national level. Frum’s core insight is that the Republican Party fell into a self-perpetuating cycle whereby its ideas attracted mainly old people, and old people in turn shaped its ideas, and so they wound up “reinventing themselves as defenders of the fiscal status quo for older Americans — and only older Americans.”

Even while fighting a desperate rear-guard campaign to prevent, and then to destroy, universal health insurance, Republicans exempted all Americans over the age of 55 from any budget cuts. As a Fox News ratings gambit, this works splendidly. As both a long-term Republican political strategy and as a governing doctrine, it is a catastrophe.


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http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141735/david-frum/crashing-the-party

[Dardmex]

wvit1001 --- Let's just hope that all of these current White House scandals & foreign policy mishaps aren't turning-off younger voters or else our party might get landslided really badly this November!

http://www.dailykos.com  ...............  http://www.MoveOn.org

[Dan]

its ideas attracted mainly old people

So those accusations of the GOP pushing granny over a cliff was a lie, huh?  If old people like the GOP, they must not be bad for old people as you claimed.

[Thomasj_tx]

its ideas attracted mainly old people

wvit, nice opinion piece.  Too bad the facts don't support it.  Unless you consider 40 years old "old"....