The 2024 election, debates and interviews aside, will be decided by voter turnout, keeping illegals from voting, and getting key groups to see their future in the balance – especially the young.
Today, most seniors, 3 of 4 over the age of 55 plan to vote. History shows they do. Of those, Pew Research suggested in August, 50 percent support Trump, and 44 percent Harris.
Other demographics are split, some more favorable to Harris than Biden, others even. One group that could tip key states is those under 30, formerly 48 percent for Biden, now 57 percent for Harris.
Ironically, their big issues – things that keep them up – are what Republicans speak to well, what they care about. A stunning number of the young struggle for a good job, stability, care for others, affordable housing, home ownership, and the basic American Dream.
Why? The dream of a career, a chance to make a difference and affordable housing. It starts with good economic conditions, innovation, job growth, low inflation, and low interest. What creates that? Lower taxes, disposable income spurring private sector investment, stability.
What else? Confidence in the future – not just in the economy but in world peace, the sanctity of citizenship, a real border, lower crime, drug trafficking, and respect for the law.
Today, in just three years, we have seen the world catch fire, economic volatility, frightening jumps in crime, drugs, and disrespect for the law. Who delivers the opposite? Compare the Biden-Harris years with Trump years. Under Republican leadership, and more fiscal responsibility, the dollar undisputed world reserve currency, with higher growth, innovation, jobs, and wages across every demographic, plus low inflation, interest on credit cards, affordable housing, and tax cuts.
So, Issue One: Stable private economy, especially for the young. The Harris-Walz plan is an abomination, higher personal and corporate taxes (read: job cuts), wage and price controls (read: rationing), new regulations (read: federal overreach), unaccountable spending (read: higher inflation and interest), more debt (read: devaluation of the dollar), a nightmare for America’s young.
Issue two: Racism. Not surprisingly, young voters do not recall a time when race and ethnicity were not big issues, differentness a settled strength, when Republicans in the 1980s had replaced endemic southern Democrat racism with a push for equal opportunity and upward mobility.
Lost are the times when Democrats, from New York’s Daniel Patrick Moynahan to Georgia’s Andrew Young, were moving beyond the idea of dependence to opportunity – or as Martin Luther King said, a time when all can be “judged by the content of their character not the color of their skin,” the American Dream. That is what Republicans stand for!
Who did that – Trump or Biden? Trump produced record economic and educational opportunities for Blacks, Hispanics, and every minority, tops in 35 years. Biden-Harris personified the exact reverse, a grievance and dependence culture, reduced self-esteem, attacks, a slide not a climb.
Rather than money giveaways, reparations, more division, forced outcomes, Marxist critical race theory, and demeaning DEI hiring, most young want opportunity, and who offers that? The Republican philosophy, respect for laws, upward mobility, and the American Dream.
Issue three: Climate, environment, conservation, or respect for Nature. The narrative offered – which many wrongly accept – is that fossil fuels cannot work with renewable energy, that it is “all or nothing,” mass regulation, mandates, federalization of the economy, all pure wind and solar.
This is not just unrealistic; it is dead wrong and counter-productive, another source of wild inflation, high-cost gas, heating oil, groceries, rents, everything. The notion that you cut fossil fuel production, and hammer the remaining companies with wage and price controls is Soviet, produces bread lines.
Truth is, conservative Republicans are not against market-driven renewables, wind and solar to thermal and tidal, but know 75 percent of the grid is tied to fossil fuels. So how about clean fossils, and safe nuclear, to help maximize US advantages and keep prices down? Compromise, not nonsense.
Let us be historically accurate and philosophically consistent. Theodore Roosevelt was the most conservationist, nature-loving, park-creating, intergenerational president in history, a Republican.
And the greatest conservative writer, Edmund Burke, was about the intergenerational ties, that lives no longer in being and those not yet born are held together by those in being. His point was that we are stewards – of the land, life, and rights. Republicans know that.
Historically and philosophically, conservatives are about the future, but not high-handed mandates to kill lights, stoves, mowers, cars, trucks, plows, boats, or liberty, but balance, rights, and preservation – or as TR used to call it, conservation.
Point: Republicans must understand that their strengths – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, economic freedom, fairness, opportunity, conservation, and respect for the law – align with the young.
So, what should happen? Republicans running for anything should take the truth to college campuses, get out there and speak with the young, talk turkey, listen and respond, believe, and communicate to create understanding. If they do this, the future is bright and free, not dark and left.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.
