Free Republic

When the whole shoddy edifice of the progressive project collapses under its own dead weight, it will largely be because the liberals forgot to breed enough mindless minions to keep shoring it up. The left has always depended on a never-ending parade of credulous children to revitalize its dwindling ranks as the march of time and maturity depletes them. Liberal youth would grow up, look around, realize how progressivism is a disaster, and largely stop buying into the nonsense. But now, young people are wising up earlier. This is bad news for liberals, but great news for America. Our youth...

A few weeks back, I read a Washington Post story "Inside the admissions process at George Washington University" and noted this interesting tidbit towards the end: GW also asks students to list a role model and two words to describe themselves. As for herself, Freitag said, she would list “Martha Stewart/Tina Fey” and “sassy/classy.” This year, she’s seeing a lot of Edward Snowden citations. I had thought about writing it up, but decided it was a pretty small thing, really. It's not secret that, as a group, younger people have a much more favorable impression of Snowden than older people....

March 28 (UPI) -- Young U.S. voters have become more likely to identify with the Democratic Party since 2006, a Gallup Poll said Friday. Gallup said the movement is fueled partly by increasing racial and ethnic diversity. But the poll found whites between the ages of 18 and 29 have also shifted to the Democrats in recent years.

Last week, MRCTV's Dan Joseph went to American University to give the student body a little general knowledge quiz. When asked if they could name a SINGLE U.S. senator, the students blanked. Also, very few knew that each state has two senators. The guesses were all over the map, with some crediting each state with twelve, thirteen, and five senators. So, when it comes to politics, the students at American University are a little rusty - but, they passed with flying colors when it comes to pop culture. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKaYnHlpD9M

The conservative 2016 contender wants to lure young and black voters to the GOP, so he's taking his message to them. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ BERKELEY, Calif. – Rand Paul's swing through Berkeley is just the beginning of his foray into traditionally Democratic territory. After his visit to this liberal stronghold, where he's speaking to students about the NSA and privacy, the Kentucky senator will make stops at the National Urban League in July and at the NAACP in the coming months, if an informal invitation from the group is made official. He's also plotting a trip to Chicago and Milwaukee, Paul said...

On Wednesday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) addressed the University of California, Berkley at an event hosted by the university's Berkeley Forum...

President Obama warned young people that if they don't sign up for Obamacare by March 31, they will face a penalty -- if they can afford it. During an interview with radio host Ryan Seacrest, Obama explained that young people might be charged a fine if they don't get insured. "If you can afford it — you just decide you don't want to get it because your attitude is 'nothing's ever going to happen to me' — then you'll be charged a penalty," Obama explained. Obama was careful to specify that people who can't afford Obamacare will not suffer a...

“It is no coincidence that Charlie Crist's law partner and biggest supporter, John Morgan, is financing medical marijuana,” said Gainesville-based GOP consultant Alex Patton. “It's a plan.”

Equal protection under the law for pre-born human beings is headed our way - and from the work of a surprising demographic: adults under 30. A 28-year old dynamo working on college campuses across the nation, Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life, exemplifies why hers is the "pro-life generation". Kristan feels deeply the loss of nearly one-third of her age group. “The undeniable fact is that nearly a third of my generation was killed by abortion. We are missing brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, husbands and wives…. But [we’re] determined to set it right. We’ve seen the ultrasounds of our...

It took long enough for the demographic that will pay the most for Obamacare to finally figure it out. Now that the wealth transfer from younger and healthier adults to older sicker ones through Obama’s mandating of unneeded comprehensive insurance for the latter has become clear, millennials have not just steered clear of the health care exchanges – they’re steering clear of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party now, too. For the past two months, Barack Obama’s approval numbers have slid for both his performance and his personal qualities. This week, the Real Clear Politics average of his overall approval...

A majority of 18-to-24-year-olds now say they would recall Obama as president if they could. It is finally happening; young people who overwhelmingly supported Obama are now turning away from him in droves. The hope and change he promised never materialized, instead replaced with deteriorating conditions. A new poll from Harvard University’s Institute of Politics found that Millennial approval of Obama has dipped to the lowest ever, at 41 percent. Their dissatisfaction with Obama now mirrors the rest of the country. Similarly, 56 percent of Americans aged 18 to 29 disapprove of Obamacare, compared to only 39 percent who support...

We keep hearing about what I like to call the Holy Grail theory of demographic change. This is the argument that the future is inevitably Democratic because Republicans aren’t just losing young people — they are structurally unable to win them, and will become more so over time. But what if this Holy Grail never appears? I don’t have any solid, irrefutable evidence that it’s happening, but Harvard’s Institute of Politics has just come out with a new survey of Millennials — whom they define as those aged 18 to 29 today — and its findings don’t provide a lot...

If there’s one thing that feeds the ObamaCare beast, it’s young, healthy consumers — the same people who voted and worked to put Barack Obama in the White House twice. In order for the system to work, insurers need to get them into the system, paying exorbitant premiums for services they will likely never use, in order to keep prices down for older, less healthy Americans who not coincidentally tend to be more politically engaged. Gallup inadvertently tested that hypothesis and proved it its latest survey: Americans younger than 30, a key group targeted by the Affordable Care Act, continue...

WASHINGTON, DC— Millions of Americans have received notifications from their insurance providers that their policies are being cancelled or altered due to the Affordable Care Act over the past four weeks. Reports on the number of cancellations nationwide vary and are still rolling in. Some project as many as 20 million will lose their current coverage under Obamacare. Young Americans for Liberty decided to look within its network of activists and supporters to see if they had been impacted. Sure enough, many had. YAL is currently collecting and posting images of insurance cancellation and alteration notices from within its network...

A lot of us are fighting for an education, battling inequality and marching for justice. Quit calling us lazy! [SNIP] ....... I’m an early millennial, born in 1984, and when I started my education, I was able to attend a classroom that had gifted and special-ed programming in my neighborhood with an average class size of 20. Current millennials in Chicago, Detroit and Philadelphia are having sit-ins and organizing unions, as their schools are closed with class sizes of 29 called too small. When children are left crying at the end of the year because their schools won’t reopen, what...

The RNC’s “Growth and Opportunity Project,” released in March, .... 14 recommendations intended to attract young voters, including forming a “celebrity task force,” empowering younger voices in digital issues, having Republicans appear more frequently on previously ignored media outlets, and making the party more welcoming. The (College Republican National Committee)'s report, released in June, focused exclusively on young voters and was scathing in its assessment of how negatively young voters saw the Republican Party. Most salient among its findings were the feedback from focus groups composed of potential Republican voters. In addition to noting that they didn’t expect the GOP...

Many conservative writers become so emotionally traumatized when presented with the growing evidence that liberalism’s grasp on America’s youth is shrinking, they revert to denial and name calling. An especially virulent out-break of this malady over-whelmed Selwyn Duke upon reading my September 4th article, ‘The Millennial Generation Is Abandoning Liberalism’. Since Mr. Duke published his manifesto, “It’s the Liberalism, Stupid”, he regularly trumpets as settled science to conservatives his theory that “there has been a consistent, but accelerating, degeneration ever since” the founding fathers established the Republic. But when a conservative rejects two hundred years of American Exceptionalism, he accepts...

If Washington Post writer, Sarah Kliff, of the WonkBlog had been the music director aboard the Titanic, the last tune played on the deck of the sinking ship would probably have been Happy Days Are Here Again. I make that claim because Ms Kliff has taken upon herself the role as pollyannish cheerleader for the "train wreck" known as ObamaCare. In her latest desperate search for a nonexistent silver lining, Kliff has conjured up what she imagines to be an indication that young people might, could be, maybe, possibly are interested in signing up for ObamaCare. Here is Kliff imagining...

The media claimed that conservatives must become more moderate or face permanent irrelevancy after the supposedly solid liberal millennial generation of 18-29 year olds that overwhelmingly supported reelection of Barack Obama. These dire warnings reminded me of the media geniuses who proclaimed after Jimmy Carter's presidential victory in 1976 that the 18-29 year olds of the Baby Boomer generation would always vote as a liberal bloc. Four years later, Baby Boomers abandoned liberalism and began reliably voting as Ronald Reagan conservatives for the next three decades. As Millennial support of President Obama has plummeted this year, it is liberalism that...

In 2012, 36% of the nation’s young adults ages 18 to 31—the so-called Millennial generation—were living in their parents’ home, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. This is the highest share in at least four decades and represents a slow but steady increase over the 32% of their same-aged counterparts who were living at home prior to the Great Recession in 2007 and the 34% doing so when it officially ended in 2009. A record total of 21.6 million Millennials lived in their parents’ home in 2012, up from 18.5 million of their...

Starting in 2014, Obamacare will attempt to get almost every American to obtain health insurance. The system desperately needs healthy young people, millions of whom don’t have health insurance, to sign up because their money is needed to subsidize treatment for older, sicker Americans. But will they? Young people will be asked to buy policies that don’t reflect the low risk they have of getting sick. Obamacare allows health insurers to vary premiums based on age, but they can charge older customers only up to three times as much as healthy young customers, while most insurers have as much as...

Media outlets lately have emphasized the challenge of enticing healthy young adults to sign up for ObamaCare, "exactly the type of person insurance plans, states and the federal government are counting on to make health reform work," as the L.A. Times put it. These pieces are useful as far as they go, but miss a key point that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito managed to convey in many fewer words during last year's Supreme Court argument on ObamaCare. Mr. Alito pointed out that young, healthy adults today spend an average of $854 a year on health care. ObamaCare would require...

A new postmortem on the November elections from the nation’s leading voice for college Republicans offers a searing indictment of the GOP “brand” and the major challenges the party faces in wooing young voters, according to a copy given exclusively to POLITICO on Sunday. The College Republican National Committee on Monday made public a detailed report — the result of extensive polling and focus groups — dissecting what went wrong for Republicans with young voters in the 2012 elections and how the party can improve its showing with that key demographic in the future. It’s not a pretty picture. In...

A Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday shows that the multiple scandals dogging President Barack Obama have finally gained traction with the general public. The poll determined that the president’ fortunes have reversed. His approval rating slipped to 45 percent, down from 48 percent at the beginning of April. At the same time, 49 percent of the public now disapproves of the job Obama is doing, compared with 45 percent disapproval rating at the beginning of April.But the more alarming number in the Quinnipiac poll was that 76 percent of the public wants a special prosecutor to investigate the IRS’ targeting...

They’re narcissistic. Apathetic. Pampered. And addicted to their four-inch screens. If you believe the conventional wisdom about the millennial generation — those 16 to 34 years of age, by most calculations — you’ve got considerable reason to worry about the future of the U.S. economy. Millennials show far less interest in buying cars, homes and other big-ticket items than their parents did at the same age, which has generated an intense effort among companies that produce those things to crack the code of these crazy kids and figure out how to sell them stuff. But the millennials may not be...

On Friday, President Obama will once more revive one of his ol’ campaign-favorite memes and remind college-age and younger voters of what it is exactly the Democrats can do for them — besides, you know, engendering a sluggish economy with a youth unemployment rate of sixteen percent, but I digress. On the campaign trail last summer, the president spoke to younger crowds about preventing the interest rate on federally subsidized Stafford loans from doubling to 6.8 percent as a way of boosting the economy, and Congress sent up a one-year extension of of the 3.4 percent rate for him to...

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) demanded information about conservative groups’ college-aged interns, prompting outrage from one of the country’s top conservative activist organizations and leading one former intern to wonder whether his family’s pizza parlor would be endangered. The IRS requested, in an audit, the names of the conservative Leadership Institute’s 2008 interns, as well as specific information about their internship work and where the interns were employed in 2012, according to a document request the IRS sent to the Leadership Institute, dated February 14, 2012. The IRS requested: “Copies of applications for internships and summer programs; to include: lists...

According to recent polls, younger Americans are increasingly disillusioned with government and cynical about the political process. Maybe they will finally realize that they are being played for patsies by the Obama administration. After all, on issue after issue, President Obama has fed younger voters a steady diet of high-minded rhetoric and then delivered policies that leave them holding the bag. The most recent example is Obamacare. For one, in order for the president’s health-care law to work properly, large numbers of young people will have to buy insurance. Those young and healthy individuals, with their low claims costs, are...

In a survey launched by Young America's Foundation and conducted by the polling company, Kellyanne Conway, Inc., more than 60 percent of college-age students feel that government should not take an active role in their day-to-day-lives, and half of respondents believe that the federal government is mostly hurting economic recovery. If history teaches us anything, a lower tax rate, less spending, and less regulation is the recipe for success. When President Reagan signed the Economic Recovery Tax Act in 1981, 20 million jobs were created, inflation plummeted, and net worth of families earning between $20,000 and $50,000 increased by nearly...

(snip) "The Founders left us the keys to a system of self-government," he went on, "the tool to do big and important things together that we could not possibly do alone." And what "big and important things" cannot be done except through government? On the president's list are railroads, the electrical grid, highways, education, health care, charity and more. One imagines a historical vision reaching as far back as the New Deal. Americans "chose to do these things together," he added, "because we know this country cannot accomplish great things if we pursue nothing greater than our own individual ambition."Notice...

The nearly 3.7 million American babies born in 1982 weren’t special, except to their families. But in the eyes of demographers, they were categorically different from the 3.6 million Americans born in 1981. They were the first members of a new club: Generation Y.This so-called millennial cohort, the largest generation in American history, landed in the cradle during an awful recession, learned to walk during the Reagan recovery, came of age in the booming 1990s, and entered the labor market after the Sept. 11 attacks and before the Great Recession, the two tragedies of the early 21st century. They’ve...

I can't help but think that many of the *idealist* (dopey) young people who voted for Obama must be getting the shock of their young lives. Many college students who voted for Obama were only children when 9/11 happened, it may not have been real to them but THIS is their 9/11, they will not forget it. The massive coverage that the Boston Marathon bombing has had has penetrated their little air-head experience of tweeting, social media and celebrities. Maybe they will be more grown up and sober people next time they vote.

Brevard Community College has fired Professor Sharon Sweet who forced her students to sign this pledge: Brevard Community College (BCC) has fired a professor after a school investigation concluded she required students to sign a pledge to vote for President Obama in the run-up to the 2012 election. The school’s spokesman John Glisch, said the Board of Trustees voted Wednesday morning to terminate mathematics professor Sharon Sweet with an overwhelming vote. “The board voted 3-1, with one member absent, to dismiss professor Sweet,” Glisch told Campus Reform Wednesday afternoon. “The termination took effect immediately, ending pay and benefits for Sweet...

In a gutsy move, Rand Paul challenged young blacks to give the conservative party, once a civil rights leader, another chance What was Rand Paul, a white Republican senator from Kentucky, doing at Howard University, a mostly black campus in Washington DC? Asking black Americans to give conservatism a second look. Paul acknowledged that some people thought he was crazy to speak to a largely democratic group, who were probably part of the 93% of blacks who re-elected President Barack Obama in 2012. He joked: "My response is that my trip will be a success if the Hilltop [the campus...

To give the Republicans a new lease of life requires an injection of youth to mix with experience. With Mitt Romney following his nominee predecessor John McCain’s fate in losing to President Obama back in November, the Republicans have another four years of soul-searching ahead of the next war for the White House in 2016. Many challenges face the party running up to the election. The inter-party divisions between the moderates, social conservatives and the Tea Party movement remain very much alive, they face a long four years of an emboldened Obama administration following its election victory, and the quest...

The Republican Party is at an impetus. Reflecting upon the 2012 primaries, it is easy for us to see how split the party has become. There was Rick Santorum, running almost entirely on social issues like abortion and family values, who drew a great deal of controversy by talking about bans on pornography and contraception. There was Ron Paul, an unwavering constitutional libertarian who championed Austrian economics and an end to wars abroad. He stood alongside Governor Rick Perry of Texas, who offered up a plan to go to war with Turkey and Venezuela. Eventually the party was left with...

Those looking for a reason for sluggish housing, weak retail sales, and low family formations rates, need only look at the plight of millennials (those aged 18-33). Many millennials have no job, high student debt with no way to pay the debt off, and few job opportunities beyond part-time employment in food services or retail. Millennials are the ones who Obama targeted to pay for Obamacare. Indeed, the forced inclusion of youth (who will overpay for health care) is supposedly what made Obamacare "affordable". Yet, even with the screw job on youth, the "Affordable Health Care Act" is so unaffordable...

It might seem easy to say, “you get what you vote for,” to the millions of young voters who supported President Obama and now can’t find work. But, with a record number of young Americans becoming homeless, blaming the victim of President Obama’s well-crafted rhetoric doesn’t seem right. In one of his last campaign speeches, President Obama told a crowd of people at the University of Wisconsin--Madison, “We tried our ideas; they worked. The economy grew. We created jobs.” This sham President Obama cooked-up is nothing short of immoral for the millions of young Americans that have been living in...

From a blog comment on a Drudge link: Congratulations to the Democrats and Young People! You now own it and you can't blame Bush. The next terrorist attack, you own it. Can't get a job after graduation, you own it. Sky rocketing energy prices due to Obama's EPA shutting down the energy producing states, you own it. A nuclear Iran, you own it. Bowing to Russia, you own it. Another severe recession, you own it. A volatile border with Mexico, you own it. Trouble getting good health care, you own it. Higher health insurance costs and health care costs, you...

I spent a great time talking to my sweet, but sometimes clueless daughters about the impact of this election. They tend to see themselves as more progressive - pro gay marriage, global warming, etc... (before you guys flame away, please know I did my best -- this is college academic influence on them). The sense I get from them and from my conversations today with friends and acquaintances, is that there seems to be a overwhelming atmosphere of regret or to be more graphic and explicit...an oh s__t, what did we just do attitude. I don't see an in-your-face hurrah...

DALLAS TWP. – C.J. Good was succinct. He voted for former Gov. Mitt Romney because “I’m a Republican. (President Barack) Obama had his chance.” Considering Good is a Dallas Middle School eighth-grade student still a few years away from actually registering to vote, one assumes he is Republican in spirit at the moment, but as he “worked the polls” in the school lobby Friday, he kept his approach apolitical, handing out ballots without comment.

Young people will have an impact on Tuesday's election, according to a poll commissioned by Students for Life of America.Seventy-seven percent of 18- to 24-year-olds plan to vote on Tuesday, compared to the 49-percent youth turnout in the 2008 election. Students for Life president, Kristan Hawkins, says, "The HHS mandate -- that mandate that forces employers of faith and conscience to have to provide abortion causing drugs for their employees -- carries negative political currency for two-fifths of young voters." Hawkins adds that the plurality of young Americans, including those in every major demographic and geographic group, said they would...

The S.S. Barack Obama is slowly submerging. A Pew Research poll released on Monday showed the President’s support is waning in key demographics from his 2008 election--including the youth vote--despite his best efforts. Though he handily won over the MTV generation in 2008 by a 33 point margin over Senator McCain, it appears that a handful of young people are thinking twice this time around. The Pew poll shows President Obama with 56 percent of the youth vote, a 21 point lead over Governor Romney. Though he still holds a strong lead among young Americans, a 10-point drop in support...

Former president Bill Clinton is slated to visit the University of Minnesota Duluth campus Tuesday afternoon, making his first return visit to Duluth since Nov. 4, 1994. During his prior stop in Duluth, President Clinton went for a morning jog on Skyline Parkway with then-mayor Gary Doty and stumped at UMD for Ann Wynia in her unsuccessful congressional bid. She ultimately lost that race to Sen. Rod Grams. This time around, Clinton will lend his support to the campaigns of fellow Democrats including former Congressman Rick Nolan, Sen. Amy Klobuchar and President Barack Obama. A recent Star Tribune poll showed...

The Obama campaign has put out an official video targeting young adults that compares voting to having sex for the first time. There really are not words to describe the ad, but it gels with the Obama campaign theme that this year’s election is all about sex, birth control and abortion. (snip.)

***UPDATE: PUTIN HAS SIMILAR AD*** Talk about desperation. They’ve finally sunken to a new low trying to get the youth vote by comparing voting for the first time to having sex for the first time. “You’re first time shouldn’t be with just anybody. You wanna do it with a great guy…” Ugh.

President Obama will make an appeal to young Americans on Friday with a live interview airing on all of MTV's channels that comes on the heels of other efforts to reach out to younger voters, including an appearance last week on "The Daily Show." Obama set to sit down with MTV News correspondent Sway Calloway at 5 p.m. ET for a half-hour session being called "Ask Obama Live: An MTV Interview With the President." The interview will take place at the White House and viewers can submit questions online.

The Harvard Institute of Politics released a poll of young voters yesterday. On the surface it seems like good news for Obama and holds few surprises. Obama has the slacker vote firmly sewn up with young voters supporting him by a 55-36 margin over Mitt Romney. ((snip)) Put simply, young Romney supporters are less common than young Obama supporters, but they appear to be more resolute. Sixty-five percent of young voters supporting Romney say they will definitely vote this fall, compared to 55 percent of young Obama supporters. If this is correct, then the actual advantage Obama has in the...

The cheering midst of a rally featuring President Barack Obama and a largely college-age crowd of 15,000 on the Oval at Ohio State University would not seem a likely place to encounter those not in the presidentÂ’s corner. Yet, the first five students approached at random by a Dispatch reporter on Oct. 9 turned out to support Republican Mitt Romney and his aspirations of replacing Obama in the White House. The must-vote adoration and enthusiasm for Obama isnÂ’t what it once was among 18- to 29-year-old Millennials in central Ohio, a must-win area in a must-win state for presidential hopefuls....

FAIRFAX, Va. (AP) -- President Barack Obama has a diagnosis for what he considers rival Mitt Romney's shifting positions: Call it a case of "Romnesia." Making a direct gender-pitch in hotly contested Virginia, Obama tells a college crowd that when it comes to issues important to women's health and jobs, Romney has conveniently overlooked his past stands.