More Young Unmarried Progressive Voters

David Frum wrote an interesting blog on New Majority, a conservative site that is pushing for ... well.... a new kind of republican majority (something like what Meghan McCain is pushing).

Starting out, Frum is dealing with the Bristol Palin/Levi break up. He says its good that its over, so that she can go back to her life rather than pretending to have a life for the political appeasement of the Republican Party. Regardless of whether this is true or not and totally disregarding the saga of the love life of someone I don't know nor do I concern myself with - the political side of this is noteworthy.

Frum says that the fact that Bristol was required to keep up appearances with Levi as a happy couple is the kind of "out of date generation" thinking that will ultimately prevent the GOP from being able to connect with any audience outside of their existing one.... which as we've seen hasn't been too successful in recent years.

"Take a look at Table A17 in this report (pdf) by the Educational Testing Service. Of children born to white women with a college degree, only 8% were born out of wedlock. But of children born to white women who did not finish college, 28% were born outside of marriage. Of children born to white women who stopped their education after high school, 42.1% were out of wedlock. And of births to white women like Bristol Palin, who have not completed high school, almost 61% were out of wedlock."

According to Frum these rates continue to be on the rise and when you look at Hispanic women or children born to Hispanic women with some college 38.6% are born out of wedlock and 48.6% are born to women who only graduated high school.

He argues that Pat Buchanan thinks these are the core of social conservatives. I've heard the same from a friend who is a state Rep. from a conservative district. He once told me that when he is knocking doors he can tell you by age only, regardless of which party they identify with, whether the voter will be supporting him or not. He said that young voters who never went to college who are at home with children and can't manage to get a leg up, he thinks that they're so angry at their own misfortune that they would rather vote for someone that would make beer illegal than vote for someone like him that is young and stepping up to fill a leadership position.

This is similar to the premise for Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas, which is now on its way to being a feature documentary. Frank argues that the people who are the most in need are easily captured by the "values" of the GOP and will eagerly vote against their own best interest.

His quote from Buchanan is a gem, however.

"there remain many socially conservative voters who are “white, working- and middle-class, Catholic, small-town, rural, unionized, middle-age and seniors, and surviving on less than $50,000 a year.”

Frum emphasizes "middle aged and seniors" from that statement, hoping that younger white downscale voters are a whole different deal.

" It is marriage that creates culturally conservative voters – and young downscale Americans are not getting married. When they do marry, they do not stay married: While divorce rates among the college educated have declined sharply since the 1970s, divorce rates among high school graduates remain ominously high.

The socially conservative downscale voter is increasingly becoming a mirage – and a Republican politics based on that mirage will only lead us deeper into the desert."

Not to gush but, wouldn't that be cool if it turns out to be true??