Nope! The GOP’s End Is Not Near.

Liberalism is just Communism sold by the drink.

P.J. O’Rourke

Legacy media have presumed a liberal monolith in America since FDR created the New Deal coalition (the greatest generation). Who can forget how the 60s begat the Anti-Establishment coalition (baby boomers) or Obama was elected by what Ron Brownstein called the Coalition of the Ascendent (a majority of minorities)? That was, of course, the voting bloc Bill Richardson (D-NM) predicted would “stay with the Democratic Party” and give “no shot” to the GOP. Bill forgot wisdom comes with age.

The view here is that 18-year-old hearts are liberal because young voters focus on issues of self awareness (“I am innocent of racism”), until jobs, children, and mortgages focus them on self survival (“I don’t want to defund the police”); thereby creating the 45-year-old conservative brain. That was my political journey, which the Brookings Institute and MSNBC regard as a rarity. Alas, they are wrong.

Research out of the University of Chicago confirms what my grandmother kept telling my father: the young tend to be liberal, drift right steadily, and become conservative at middle age. Sam Peltzman, the professor who conducted the research, stated, “We can say, with a great deal of confidence, that people get more conservative when they get older – not just a little bit – a pretty big change over their lifetime.”

Two Generations Prove Aging Creates Republicans

The table below depicts how the Greatest Generation voted from 1964 to 2012. Barry Goldwater got only 39% of their vote in 1964 (a 22 point deficit). Then, they drifted decidedly right.

The table below depicts how Baby Boomers voted from 1992 to 2016. Republican George H. W. Bush got only 36% of their vote in 1992 (the Bush-Clinton-Perot election). Then, they drifted decidedly right.

It’s clear generations grow conservative with age, but why? Kellyanne Conway cites the politics of situation. Because of the Depression and World War, the Greatest Generation were FDR liberals, until their children re-defined “liberal” to mean drugs, flag-burning, and sexual promiscuity. They never turned back.

Civil rights, feminism, and Vietnam pushed Baby Boomers toward Clinton liberalism, until the dot-com bust and Oval Office sex turned them into their parents. Even Democrats doubt they’ll turn back.

Peltzman’s research tracked how individual political ideologies change over time. He analyzed the General Social Survey from 1974 to 2018, looking at both period data (answers by age groups during a 5-year span) and cohort data (individuals’ shift in political ideology over time). He then averaged the results across the entire period to find generational averages, regardless of era.

Surprise! Young voters are always liberal: with 33.7% self-described as liberal (and only 25.8% conservative).

After 20 years, middle-age voters have definitely drifted right: with 35.8% self-described as conservatives (and only 24.9% liberal).

After another 20 years, senior voters are predominantly conservative: with 41% self-described as conservative (and only 19.8% liberal).

Peltzman claims that “age 45 is the rough average of when most people have drifted far enough right to no longer be considered liberal [and] today’s older conservatives aren’t likely to be replaced by a crop of radical liberal voters.” He found “young people [are] as liberal as they have been the past 50 years [but] by the time they’re 45, a lot of this (radicalism) will go away.”

To understand why voters drift right with age, define a “conservative” as a preserver and protector of children, church, and community. By 45, how many of your high school and college friends had children, re-found their faith, or had lived in one town for ten years?

Hence, good parents now confront Virginia’s “woke” school boards to preserve merit-based advancement and kill anti-racist lesson plans. A super-majority (70%) of citizens selected “Christian” on the 2020 census, and almost all Americans (90%) care about causes in their community (source: Parade magazine). Numbers this large clearly transcend race and gender.

Turns out Republicans do have a shot at voters from the Coalition of the Ascendant, despite Orange Man Bad (Trump). From 2016 to 2020, he was up 8 points with Hispanic, 7 points with Asian, 5 points with “other” race, and 4 points with black voters. Newsweek now reports Biden’s down 14 points with Asians, 18 points with Blacks and 22 points with Hispanics. Duh! Asian parents want merit-based schools, black business owners want law and order, and Latinos blame Biden for the border crisis.

This shift right can be seen in Virginia’s gubernatorial election, where Republican Youngkin is selling preservation. Moms and Dads, protect your kids from school boards. When Democrat McAuliffe finally got the memo, he was in a dead heat – in a state Biden won by 10 points. Maybe Virginia Democrats have a lesson to be learned…

…when “progress” means tampering with her kid’s education or defunding his local police department, moms and dads get “conservative” in a hurry.