I vividly remember watching every single 2016 Republican presidential debate. I was 13 years old, new to politics and transfixed by the Titanic force that washed over the country seven years ago. My only previous experience with politics was watching a map slowly fill with red and blue (more blue) in 2012.
Now, Donald Trump stood center stage. To his left came a statement that could have been uttered by any of the men on the debate stage. “We’re on the verge,” said the TV set, “of being the first generation of Americans that leave our children worse off than ourselves.”
My 13-year-old mind – five years removed from the pressures of reality – wrote these claims off as hyperbolic. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and then-Ohio Gov. John Kasich, among others, prevaricated some version of this warning every time they spoke. I now realize that they weren’t pessimists; they were prophets.
Rubio, Kasich and every Republican also-ran who sounded the alarm seven years ago were right, but even they were far too late. The Republican Party has drifted away from young people, leaving them unmoored in the midst of an economic and social maelstrom.
The Republicans sell out
It didn’t have to be this way. Before I was even born, the stage was set for the decline of my country. The promise of the Reagan fusionists was everlasting economic prosperity at the small cost of libertarians running the show. Gross domestic product would go up every year, prosperity would reign in America and Republicans would be electorally ascendant in perpetuity.
That didn’t last long.
The Reagan agenda emptied out America. Globalization offshored millions of jobs, decimating the well-paying low-education careers that allowed decades of easy access to home ownership and prosperity. My generation grew up surrounded by closed factories, shadows of once-vibrant Main Streets and – at least in Appalachia – an oppressive opioid crisis.
It is nothing less than a slap in the face to see the current Republican Party blissfully embracing the same economic liberalism that gave us a nation in decline.
Where am I – the young social and economic conservative – to find a political home? In the same party as the free marketeers who wreaked havoc upon the middle class? Am I to make common cause with the libertarians who sold America’s future for short-term success?
Republican Party not interested in Gen Z
The Democrats – or at least the populists and left-wingers among them – recognize some of these problems, but their solutions are wrong at best and counterproductive at worst. On any number of issues, Democrats default to heavy-handed government action on average Americans instead of going after the bad actors.
Take student loans, where instead of penalizing colleges for obscene tuition prices, Democrats attempted to force taxpayers to foot the bill.
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To repeat the refrain from seven years ago, this generation is decidedly worse off than their parents. Politicians may pay lip service to generational struggles, but no prominent voice seems bothered by young people being shut out of their own society.
Certainly not on the Republican side of the ledger, which has seemingly evaluated the electoral returns and decided on this as the default response to unsatisfied 20-somethings: “You got a raw deal. Tough.”
Republican leadership has seemingly sworn off appealing to young people, or at least temporarily surrendered. They do so at their extreme peril, as Generation Z becomes an ever-greater share of the electorate. Shoulder-shrugging in response to young people being locked out of their own society will not work much longer.
I care not for the internal Republican squabbling over partisan orthodoxy. I avoid social media like the plague, but when I must venture into the wastelands of Twitter, my eyes are captured by boundless right-wing infighting. Flame wars wage over which of the endlessly enumerating Republican presidential candidates has the right view on Ukraine. Which conservative talking head is more correct about today’s cultural outrage? Around and around we go.
My concerns – like many of my fellow Gen Zers – are far more provincial. Can I buy a house? Can I afford to get married? Can I support a family? The most basic pillars of American society, once available to all, are becoming increasingly illusive. This is to say nothing about buying a house or raising a family comfortably. For many young Americans, those ships have already sailed.
Affordable housing has ceased to exist. Homeownership, long foundational to the American dream, is only accessible to young people on the far edges of major cities. Because the country was so hollowed out and opportunities only exist in the metros, demand far outstrips supply. Every day, my D.C.-area friends and I mull just how awful of a commute we’re willing to endure for the price of owning, not renting.
Inflation prices out millennials, Gen Z:Buying a home was a dream for millennials like me. For many, it won’t be possible.
Beyond economics
The GOP has decided to wage an all-out war on woke. As a young social conservative, I applaud their efforts to finally say “no” to a culture descending into madness, yet it’s telling that nobody can define what “woke” is. To steal a term from the other side, nobody is asking what the “root causes” of woke are.
Are we surprised that American society is fragmenting as the family is breaking apart? The United States has the highest rate of single-parent households in the world. Just under 1 in 4 Americans grow up without a father at home.
The war on woke distracts from the serious thinkers doing serious work on fixing American families.
Young conservatives are adrift in the movement. Instead of focusing on exploding inflation and economic crisis, the Republican Party is occupied with a 3-year-old election. Instead of taking colleges to task for gouging students with tuition, the Republican Party pontificates endlessly about personal responsibility. Instead of fighting the root causes of the culture war – collapsing family life – the Republican Party passes anti-“woke” legislation while unable to define the term.
This is the rot of liberalism within the Republican Party. Older party elites were brought up on a desire to keep government out of so-called private affairs, like the family. They have forgotten that the family is the fundamental political unit. Without strong families, the country falls apart. The well-being of young people, those who are trying to form families, is the highest purpose of government.
The GOP is a rudderless party
The Republican Party elites are rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Family formation is at an all-time low. The life expectancy is in free-fall. The ship is sinking. Instead of having any of these conversations, the powers that be think it very important to debate the debt ceiling.
The dirty little secret is that most of the people making decisions in the Republican Party – but also the country at large – will not have to contend with their consequences. The same generation has ruled America for 30 years, and human biology will soon come calling. Instead of recognizing their time is up and retiring, members of this generation has decided they will be carried out – in coffins, if necessary.
Lest you think this sounds harsh, they inherited a world-historically wealthy country. They leave us a nation in decline. They have failed, in every conceivable way. The least they could do is not threaten to blow up the country every six months on their way out.
Rodge Reschini, a summer intern with USA TODAY Opinion, is a rising senior at Cornell University. He’s the editor-in-chief of the Cornell Review. Follow him on Twitter:@r_reschini
