What does the GOP offer to appeal to "Millennial" voters? (born post-1980)

[Never]

What have the Democrats to offer? Other than unemployment and the so called "social issues"?

Not hating the poor, minorities, and gays, not wanting to go to war at every provocation, and generally not acting nearly as dickish as the other side.

I dispute that.

I STRONGLY dispute that ... Have we really sunk so low into bitter partisanship that we're trying to politicize foreign policy views??  Both far back and recent history has proven time and time again that there's no tangible difference between the two parties on foreign policy.  Party in power likes war, party not in power criticizes war.

This is laughably absurd.  If Gore was President we wouldn't have invaded Iraq.

That's only part of the story. If Gore were President, we still would have invaded Afghanistan... and one way or another, The War on Terror would have happened.

Fundamentally, it seems that parties in power have fewer qualms about war than the opposition.

Now, back to the originial question. I do think that the GOP could offer Millennials fiscal responsibility, but to be honest, I don't view this particular generation as valuing thriftiness, so I doubt that Republicans will be able to make inroads in this regard.

On social issues, it seems like the Millennials will just latch on whatever seems popular without really analyzing the deeper significance of any issue. Since Republicans don't generally pander to groups or causes on a whim, it doesn't seem like the party is all that suited to the Millennial way of thinking on social issues.

Even though Republicans might not have much to offer to the eariler Millennial voters, it's entirely possible that this won't matter in the long run, considering that Romney actually won voters between the ages of 18 and 20. Since this is a relatively small group, it is unclear whether this resurgence in support for Republicans means that these new voters are a new generation or the later part of the Millenials, but it is still something to think about.

[Never]

Since Republicans don't generally pander to groups or causes on a whim

HAHAHAHAHAHA

For one, the so-called "War on Women" narrative is never something that Republicans would use.

[Never]

No, it isn't.

They prefer the "War on Coal", to pander to obsolescent miners.

Or the "War on Christmas", to pander to monotheists with a martyr complex.

Whatever. It seems like since I pointed out that Democrats lost voters younger than twenty in 2012, people pulled out one part of my post and laughed my entire argument off. Hey, that's the Internet. No big deal.

[Never]

Are late-90s kids more Republican than my own 1989 cohort?

Of course. But this will not save the Reagan Coalition - late-wave Silents were more Democratic than their earlier counterparts; it did not save Roosevelt's.

Well, us late-90's kids seem Republican, if you want to rely on the available data here, here and here (last one is a blog, but a well-written one FWIW.)

Late-wave Millennials might be like late-wave Silents, but the Millennials as a whole are a much larger population than the Silents, and we probably haven't even seen the full impact of the tail end of the Millennials yet. We could see the implications of this youth trend towards Republicans in 2016.

Wouldn't it be something if the Republican nominee in 2016 wins the 18-24 demographic and the Democrat win the 25-29 cohort?

[Never]

One thing that does help the GOP a little bit among the youngest voters though is this: Didn't Quiverfull really take off in the mid-'90s?

I remember seeing an article about 10 years ago that said the birth rate among conservatives was much, much higher than among liberals. I don't know if this was true before that era, and I don't know if it's still true today, but that was certainly the trend 10 or 20 years ago. That was really the entire point of Quiverfull.

Unfortunately, the right-wing media scapegoats poor welfare recipients for having 1 or 2 kids, while praising right-wing Quiverfull types who have 15 or 20.

I wonder how much the Quiverfull movement could really have impacted the birth rate. It's always seemed to be a relatively small group, but it is possible that the movement could shape the political leanings of younger voters.

Still, you probably have a point about the conservative birthrate being higher than that of liberals. There seems to be a correlation between more religious people (conservatives) having more children and the more secular (liberals) putting off childbirth. It's easier to deliberately not have kids now than it was in previous generations with contraceptives and, ahem, abortion. I suspect that liberals have been more apt to take advantage of those methods.