We saw this in the backlash to past candidates such as Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann, and this distaste for vitriol and affinity for post-partisan discussing, in many ways, explains President Obama's popularity among young people.
The GOP must also keep this election away from social issues. As we've chronicled before, young voters have little appetite for returning to debates over abortion, gay marriage and Terri Shaivo (which did, shockingly enough, come up in a debate during the run-up to the Florida primary).
And, whether conservative voters in states such as South Carolina like it or not, the tide has turned on once-pivotal issues such as gay marriage — we is seemingly being ok-ed by voters in a new state each week.
That ban on social issue campaigning also extends to birth control, a debate which has been ramped up of late as GOP contenders, led by Newt Gingrich, has argued that President Obama is waging a "war on the Catholic church" because provisions in his healthcare plan require insurance providers to cover the cost of contraceptives.
While using a "war of the Catholic church" sounds nice in theory, new polling shows that the majority of Americans, 66%, support requiring employers and insurance providers to cover contraceptives.
To avoid disenfranchising young voters, the GOP must avoid sexually-charged issues, which they have historically been and continue to be on the wrong side of. So Alexander, if not sex (birth control, gay marriage, etc) what issues should the GOP talk about (also excluding college tuition, which we've written about at length) in order to win young votes?
No comments:
Post a Comment