I welcome you and look forward to hearing more from you in the future, both diaries and comments.

Glad to have you. And dittos what Fred Maidment said above.

As a fellow 80’s kid, I’ve been thinking about the youth vote. We carried it in ’80 & ‘84. You’re right to invoke Reagan. There’s a long trend of Republicans losing youth ever since his presidency:

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/partyID_youth.png

Charlatans use the Republican loss of the youth vote to push their own liberal/moderate social agenda within the GOP. “We need to embrace (Environmentalism, Affirmative Action, Abortion Rights, Evolution, Peace or whatever) to lure back the youth vote.” Pfft.

-The youth interest in the environment is shallow: http://www.aei.org/outlook/30

-There’s no evidence that racial affirmative action wins. If anything, Obama held the youth vote by caving in on AA vis-à-vis Sasha & Malia.

-Youth are trending pro-life: http://www.lifenews.com/nat481.html

-Evolution is a matter for local school boards, not partisan politicos.

-The military is a volunteer force. Young people aren’t worried about the draft.

Reasonable Republicans can sometimes differ on these epic concerns. But there’s no need to accept the flimsy Democratic premise that senile old conservatives vote against their interests because of wedge issues.

Democrats win young voters with tax credits for the lowest income brackets, minimum wage hikes, “free” universal health care, expansion of Pell grants & publicly subsidized rail transit. Though the economic model is not sustainable, it speaks to the economic anxiety of young people.

Republicans can speak to that anxiety without imitating Democrats. We do it with the payroll tax, expanding HSAs, exposing universities wasting tuition dollars & keeping fuel prices low. We should also reverse years of bad policies which gave us the housing bubble, which was absolutely brutal on young people.

As Republicans, we definitely need to get our house in order. But we have an advantage in that conservatism offers an ideological framework that CAN appeal to all Americans.

Welcome.

Congratulations on your first diary, and welcome to RedState! We always look forward to new viewpoints, and the discourse here is fun, fervent and occasionally frenetic and even fuming.

We’ll agree with you and praise you, and we’ll disagree with you and tear your argument to shreds. It’s nothing personal, and it prepares you to better defend your positions in the future. Be prepared to be challenged on everything, by conservatives, libertarians, liberals and more.

And don’t be afraid to challenge us, as long as your argument is factual and logical.

Welcome aboard!

I think most people are conservative to some extent, but they also have a Libertarian streak and want the government to leave them the heck alone.

If you look back in history at Barry Goldwater, he was plenty conservative but he was also a favored getting government out of people’s lives, as was for that matter Reagan to some extent. Even the 1995 Contract With America was more libertarian leaning than culture warrior. Recently the Tea Parties were more about getting government out of people’s financial business.

Bottom line…Less government = good government.