This article on college-age Republicans has some encouraging news. The younger generation appears to be open-minded about gay marriage; they think interracial marriage is a positive development; they either support abortion rights or they just aren’t interested in discussing them; and some of them are even doing outreach to the Muslim and Latino communities. It would be wonderful if we could stop fighting about those things some time in the not-too-distant future. However, this next part kind of annoyed me.
Zoey Kotzambasis, vice president of the College Republicans at the University of Arizona, considers herself a conservative. But she supports both same-sex marriage and abortion rights. Those are not just her opinions.
“A lot of the College Republicans I know share the same liberal-to-moderate social views,” she added. “And I think that’s changing the face of the party.”
I don’t want to pick on Ms. Kotzambasis, but we are not seeing ANY evidence of this change in the Republican Party. In fact, we are seeing a very strong trend in precisely the opposite direction. The Guttmacher Institute tracks state and federal legislation pertaining to reproductive rights. Here are their findings for 2012:
To date, legislators have introduced 944 provisions related to reproductive health and rights in 45 of the 46 legislatures that have convened this year. (Legislatures in Montana, Nevada, North Dakota and Texas do not meet in 2012.) Fully half of these provisions would restrict abortion.
So far this year, 76 abortion restrictions have been approved by at least one legislative chamber, and nine have been enacted. This is below the record-breaking pace of 2011, when 127 abortion restrictions had been approved by at least one body, and 38 had been enacted by this time last year. However, the overall level of legislative activity is nonetheless significantly higher than usual for an election year: In 2010, for example, only 46 such restrictions had passed at least one house by this point, while in 2008, only 34 had passed one chamber by the end of the first quarter. (The number of enacted abortion restrictions totaled 19 at this point in 2010, but in 2008, none of the enacted bills restricted access to abortion.)
Needless to say, with perhaps a single handful of exceptions, all of those efforts to undermine women’s reproductive rights have been initiated and primarily supported by members of the Republican Party. The last two years have been unprecedented. And if you support women’s rights and women’s health, this anti-woman trend should not be ignored. Maybe you think that lower taxes for rich people are more important than funding for women’s health centers, but that just seems stupid to me.
If you’re a young Republican who doesn’t hate gays, isn’t terrified of Muslims and Mexicans, doesn’t want to restrict abortion access, and doesn’t support disenfranchising blacks, then you must be attracted to the party for strictly economic reasons. But that’s a whole lot of hate and intolerance you have to overlook just to get a few less regulations and a lower marginal tax rate for people making over a quarter million dollars a year. The young folks will change the face of the GOP for the better eventually, but it hasn’t happened yet. In fact, the modern GOP is so radically opposed to the values of young people that it is surprising that any college-age folks can support them.
