How doomed are the conservatives? Pretty doomed.

Courtesy of New York Magazine:

How doomed are conservatives? Pretty doomed, if you look carefully at the Pew Research Survey’s close analysis of the youth vote in the 2012 elections. The Republicans’ long-term dilemma has generally been framed in racial terms, but it’s mainly a generational one. The youngest generation of voters contains a much smaller proportion of white voters than previous generations, and those whites in that generation vote Republican by a much smaller margin than their elders. What’s more, younger voters supported President Obama during the last two election cycles for reasons that seem to go beyond the usual reasons — social issues like gay marriage and feminism, immigration policy, or Obama’s personal appeal — and suggest a deeper attachment to liberalism. The proclivities of younger voters may actually portend a full-scale sea change in American politics.

Ahh! This is the kind of early morning post that puts a smile on your face for the entire day.

The idea that perhaps someday soon the racism, class warfare, and hypocritical moralizing that seems to  define today's Republican party might come to an abrupt end is perhaps the most uplifting news possible.

However, though I don't want to rain on any parades, I do feel obligated to point out that we have seen a generation like this before. They were the Baby Boomers, and they were FAR more liberal, less warlike, and better educated than their parents and their parent's parents, and yet something happened to them.

They (we) ended up helping to elect Ronald Reagan, free love hippies evolved into money focused yuppies, and somehow we seemed to lose direction, until ultimately we became the very establishment that we had railed against only a handful of years before.

I hope against hope that we do not witness this same scenario play out once again.