From the mouths of rascals

"If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart.  If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain." -Misattributed to Winston Churchill.

We deal with much that is myth-making and fairy tales on this blog, especially when it comes to the "conservative movement" at its fantasyland or fever swamp. What happens when reality, discernible, objective reality smacks conservatives in the face? As it turns out, the liars simply wave it away and attempt to make their fairy tales a little more palatable. If you spend any time around older conservatives, you are bound to hear Churchill's supposed wisdom in one form or another. The sentiment is always the same, "young people are too stupid, uninformed, or idealistic to understand how the world works and therefore should not vote because... they vote the wrong way." And of course, the old keep aging, so you will never "catch up," or find the slightest respect for your beliefs if they contradict "common sense." Whatever bill o'reilly says common sense is at that moment.

Is it surprising then when the college republicans find (shock! horror!) that young people have no love for or respect for the aging, angry elder beliefs? Other commentators like Alex Pareene have already put the "duh?" into the CRs findings, and simply reiterating that young people are not that into fucking over their neighbors, scapegoating people a little different than them, or any of the other myriad implications of a party seen by them as "closed-minded, racist, rigid, [and] old-fashioned."

ThinkProgress summarized the CR report with 11 points:

1. GOP economic polices are to blame for the recession. “Although ‘Republican economic policies’ is the factor least likely to be viewed as playing a major role in causing the crisis, this is mostly due to young Republicans in the sample hesitating to pin blame directly on their own party, and an outright majority of young people still think those Republican policies are to blame – hardly an encouraging finding.”
2. Lower taxes will not create jobs.” In the August 2012 XG survey, there was not a strong consensus around the virtues of lowering taxes and regulations on business. Only 34% of respondents in that survey thought they’d be better off if the corporate tax rate were lowered, and only 36% thought such a move would make it easier for young people to get jobs.”
3. Increase taxes on the wealthy. “Perhaps most troubling for Republicans is the finding from the March 2013 CRNC survey that showed 54% of young voters saying ‘taxes should go up on the wealthy,’ versus 31% who say “taxes should be cut for everyone.”
4. End the attacks on women’s reproductive health. “[T]he issue of protecting life has been conflated with issues around the definition of rape, funding for Planned Parenthood, and even contraception. In the words of one female participant in our Hispanic voter focus group in Orlando, “I think Romney wanted to cut Planned Parenthood. And he supports policies where it would make it harder for a woman to get an abortion should she choose, even if it were medically necessary. That goes head in hand with redefining rape.”
5. Expand universal health care coverage. “Many of the young people in our focus groups noted that they thought everyone in America should have access to health coverage. In the Spring 2012 Harvard Institute of Politics survey of young voters, 44% said that “basic health insurance is a right for all people, and if someone has no means of paying for it, the government should provide it.” … As one participant in our focus group of young men in Columbus put it, “at least Obama was making strides to start the process of reforming health care.”
6. Provide comprehensive immigration reform. “The position taken most frequently by young voters was that “illegal immigrants should have a path to earn citizenship,” chosen by 35% of respondents… Some 19% chose “illegal immigrants should be deported or put in jail for breaking the law,” while another 17% took the position that “illegal immigrants should have a path to legal status but not citizenship.”
7. Cut the defense budget first. “Indeed, a large number of respondents pointed to the defense budget as the place where cuts should start. In the survey, 35% of respondents thought that “we should have a smaller defense budget and leaner military,” including 49% of young independents.”
8. Democrats are more responsive on student loans. “Many focus group members did think that Democrats were responding to the student loan crisis. “I think they’re more in tune to what we need right now with student loans, getting a job, fixing the housing market and the environment,” observed one participant from Orlando, with another adding that he had “heard Obama once say, oh, he has student loans, he went to school, he knows what we’re going through.”
9. Climate change is real. “Ultimately, while voters may say they are concerned about climate change, they rarely list it among the issues on the top of their minds.”
10. Bush’s wars blew up the deficit. “The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan themselves, however, were largely viewed as having been a net negative for the U.S. In fact, during focus group discussions about the recession, one respondent said she felt that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had contributed in part to the economic crisis.”
11. Marriage equality for all. “Surveys have consistently shown that gay marriage is not as important an issue as jobs and the economy to young voters. Yet it was unmistakable in the focus groups that gay marriage was a reason many of these young voters disliked the GOP.”

So, is it any wonder that the strategy so far by the gop has been to disenfranchise young people? These attitudes existed before this report was even some bow-tied wet dream. Cynicism reaches the peak when contrasted with the diseased idealism sold by the AstroTurf tea party. "Capitalism now, capitalism next week, capitalism forever!" Hard times conservatism as analyzed by Thomas Frank; angry, confused old people raging against the government and imaginary threats while ignoring real ones. Coincidentally, Dr. Frank does an excellent write-up of the college republicans in The Wrecking Crew that shows the CRs as not just some silly auxiliary to the "conservative movement" but the leading edge of radicalism on campus. Abramoff, Reed, Rove, Ryan, and countless others wiled away their college years disrupting meetings, starting bestiality clubs, and shaking down businesses to do dirty work such as destroying PiRGs and other activist groups.

Those professional conservative entrepreneurs started on the radical right, and stayed there. Thus leaving the Old Lion's legacy intact but whomever actually uttered that quote was slightly mistaken.