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Right young things
A youthquake that is helping George Bush
IN WOODY ALLEN's musical comedy, ?Everyone Says I Love You?, one young character suffers from a terrible affliction: compulsive conservatism. He annoys his decent (ie, liberal) parents by calling for smaller government or extolling the latest article in the National Review. Everything ends happily, however: the parents discover he is suffering from a brain tumour. The tumour is removed, and with it goes the youth's annoying politics.
These days more and more young Americans are suffering from a similar affliction. This week Washington saw two jamborees for young right-wingers: a National Conservative Student Conference, put on by the Young America's Foundation, and a National Convention of College Republicans. Hundreds of young conservatives flooded into the capital to listen to their heroes (including a wrestler called Warrior), to learn how to identify liberal textbook bias, to visit the White House, and to watch Karl Rove receiving the Lee Atwater Leadership Award.
George Bush's presidency is producing a tremor similar to the Reagan youthquake of the 1980s. The College Republicans have tripled their membership in the past three years, increasing their chapters from 409 to 1,148 and recruiting 22,000 new members in 2002 alone. They now have more than 100,000 members, many in the most unlikely places. At the University of California at Berkeley, there are now 500 Young Republicans and a conservative newspaper, the California Patriot. At a recent convention of Californian Young Republicans in Berkeley (entitled ?behind enemy lines?), several hundred enthusiasts marked the 34th anniversary of the People's Park riots by descending on the park to mount a noisy display of patriotism (awakening the local homeless from their mid-day naps in the process). They waved flags, chanted ?USA? and sang the ?Star-Spangled Banner?. ?Like the marines rolled into Baghdad a few weeks ago to liberate the city, we rolled into Berkeley ready for a fight,? as one put it.
All this coincides with a general rightward shift in young people's views. Bob Dole lost the 18-29-year-old vote by 19 percentage points; Mr Bush lost by two points. Students have been sceptical about bossy governments for years. Now they are increasingly sceptical about the ?Ab Fab? values of the 1960s generation?particularly in regard to casual sex and abortion?and increasingly enthusiastic about America's use of military might. A poll by Harvard University's Institute of Politics in April found that three-quarters of students trusted the armed forces ?to do the right thing? either all or most of the time. In 1975 the figure was about 20%. Another poll, by the University of California at Los Angeles, found that 45% of freshmen supported an increase in military spending, more than double the figure in 1992.
Why this upturn in conservatism? One reason is a healthy desire to tweak the noses of people in authority. America's academic establishment is so solidly liberal that Naderites easily outnumber Republicans. The leftists who seized control of the universities in the 1960s have imposed their world-view on the young with awesome enthusiasm, bowdlerising text-books of anything that might be considered sexist or racist, imposing draconian speech codes and inventing pseudo-subjects such as women's studies. What better way of revolting against such illiberal claptrap than emulating the character in Mr Allen's film?
Another reason is September 11th, which not only produced a surge of patriotism but also widened the gap between students (who tended to see the attacks as examples of evil) and Vietnam-era professors (who agonised about what America must have done wrong). The Harvard Institute of Politics found two-thirds of students supporting the war in Iraq. Pro-war groups sprouted in such liberal campuses as Brandeis, Yale and Columbia. At Amherst College many students were noisily furious when 40 teachers paraded into the dining hall with anti-war slogans.
A third reason is that American conservatives devote a lot of energy to recruiting the young. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the Young America's Foundation and the Federalist Society are out organising. Conservative foundations finance conservative newspapers and provide scholarships for right young things (one conservative impresario compares funding young conservatives to building a wine collection). The Heritage Foundation provides internships for 100 students a year.
And they matter
In 2000, the Republicans discovered that they could no longer rely on their air superiority (ie, paid television advertising) to win elections. They needed troops on the ground. In 2002 College Republicans (together with gun activists) played the same sort of role in the party that trade unionists and blacks have long played in the Democratic Party. They boosted turn-out and harassed opponents. Norm Coleman, the new senator for Minnesota, attributes his victory to College Republicans.
These footsoldiers also represent the future of the Republican Party. One reason why Britain's Conservative Party is in such a sorry state is that the average age of its members is almost 70. The young conservatives who crowded into Washington this week suggest a sprightlier future for the Republicans. In the 1970s and 1980s the likes of Karl Rove and Grover Norquist turned the College Republicans from a social club into a well-oiled political machine. Their successors continue to fine-tune the machine: Scott Stewart, the group's chairman since 1999, has increased its operating budget from $250,000 a year to $1.4m.
These young people are changing the party as well as revitalising it. They are middle-class and hard-working?a long way from the comfortable preppies who used to typify young Republicanism (such as the young Mr Bush). And they usually take a tolerant approach to subjects such as race and homosexual marriage. Whatever the short-term prospects of the Republican Party, its long-term future looks good.
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