TNR - Why Are Republicans Losing Young Voters? Because They Hate Young Voters.

[hatrack]

A liberal victory in Wisconsin’s recent high-stakes state Supreme Court election has left former Governor Scott Walker in a foot-stamping, multiplatform fume that targeted the young voters who swung behind the victorious Janet Protasiewicz. “Younger voters may be the behind [sic] the stinging loss for conservatives in WI this week,” he tweeted. “We have to undo years of liberal indoctrination.”

Not content to just tweet, Walker took his complaints to Fox News in an attempt to expand his brief against the “indoctrination” of youth. In his telling, the younger generations have been too exposed to “radical ideas,” such as “climate change and defunding the police … abortion, and all these sorts of other issues.” What’s more, “they have never heard the opposing viewpoint. And so, if that’s all they hear in college and high school and social media and culture, you can see why they’ve gone so lockstep in that regard. We’ve got to turn that around.” Walker’s theory of the Wisconsin election might be more convincing if there wasn’t a far less convoluted explanation at the ready, which is simply that young voters did hear the opposing view and found it both substantially objectionable and antithetical to their interests.

EDIT

So while Walker may believe that some level of “indoctrination” is behind the way the youth vote disproportionately tilts toward Democrats, perhaps there’s something to the theory that young voters are simply noticing what’s going on in the world around them and responding in kind to this abundance of observable information. For example, it could be that young Wisconsinites remember Walker, their would-be liberator from the chains of indoctrination, as the governor whose economic numbers lagged those of Democrat-run neighbor Minnesota, or the guy whose key achievement was saddling the state with his doomed FoxConn factory boondoggle.

Looking further afield, maybe young voters are similarly observing that Republicans seem to just not like them very much! They are probably reading about how conservatives are banning books and drag shows, demonizing gay and trans people, and thwarting progress on climate mitigation—an issue pretty dear to their hearts since they, along with their own children, will be greatly impacted by the environmental calamities to come. It could be that young voters actually have heard the “opposing view” very clearly and they find it to be out of touch and off-putting.

EDIT

https://newrepublic.com/post/171924/republicans-young-voters-scott-walker

[calimary]

1. He just wants them indoctrinated HIS way.

And he’s pissed off that the truth and reality and logic and reason got to them first. Maybe because they see this shit for what it is, and they reasonably and quite understandably don’t want it.

[Beartracks]

5. When Republicans complain about indoctrination of voters...

... it is a confession that they wish to indoctrinate voters.

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[calimary]

9. Exactly.

[republianmushroom]

2. Because most have some education, more education less republican voters.

That's why control school boards , ban books, keep them pregnant is the republican goal.

[Crowman2009]

3. As a young person back in the day, I found ways around this to find more information.

Usually it was either the library or the book store. Luckily their are plenty of online options available nowadays.

[world wide wally]

4. Maybe those kids were raised on all that "bullshit" about personal freedom in the USA and they

don't like the way Republicans keep trying to take those freedoms away.
(just a guess)

[Hugh_Lebowski]

6. The convenient thing for them though is that they can view this author's argument as circular

IOW, they start with the presumption that it's 'liberal indoctrination' that's causing young people to not like Republican positions (as described in the last paragraph) in the first place ...

They can argue that it's not valid to dismiss that possibility, and from a purely rhetorical perspective ... it may have some validity, if I were argue from a position of total intellectual honesty.

That doesn't mean, however, that I don't support this so-called indoctrination, because in reality, it's teaching common decency, and it's what is needed to make this country better, to be clear.

In reality it's mostly the fact that young people are generally liberal, and it's been that way for like ... eternity.

[Beartracks]

7. "they have never heard the opposing viewpoint"??

With Republican dominance of mainstream media, and constantly flooding the sphere of public debate with bullshit, how could anyone NOT hear the Republicans' "opposing viewpoint"? It stands in stark opposition to reality, too, so it really is impossible not to notice.

===========

[Aristus]

8. Not to mention the Republican rallying cry:

"I don't care how many kids get killed at long as I get to keep my guns."

Not the best way to attract younger voters...

[machoneman]

10. Good article and so are the replies above. The reasons young folks reject the R's is plainly seen...

across the country and not just in WI. They like me say that every single plan, law, platform or even idea from them is exactly what I and the young oppose. Put another way, if they introduced issues the people want (and not just the young) the R's would not be bitching about indoctrination and other things that they claim influence voters to go to the Democratic side.

Alas, their ilk will suffer greatly in future elections since their brazen efforts to kill the vote will not succeed. Sucks to be an R today, eh? LOL