Why We Lost, Part II

New Jerseyans (and Younger Voters) Favor Clinton ‘Cause They Don’t Know Any Better!

By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog

Clinton and Obama

There’s still plenty of recriminations, wild theories and fruitless scheming going down in GOP circles with Election 2012 over three months back in the rear view mirror, Save Jerseyans.

I still don’t think it’s very complicated. On the day after Mitt lost, I pointed out that the major reason why Republicans crashed and burned in 2012 was the financial crisis of 2008 or, more to the point, the Republican Party’s failure to successfully assign blame where it belonged: with liberal policies that collapsed the housing market.

Immigration, social media, candidate selection… all important, but each of lesser importance than the reality of an entire generation believing George Bush and Republicans nearly initiated a second Great Depression.

However, a new poll today released by Monmouth University/Asbury Park Press Poll reminded me of another huge catalyst of Democrat success in 2012: William Jefferson “Slick Willie” Clinton.

Numbers to support my claim via pollster Patrick Murray:

Preference for Clinton (21%) has held steady compared to a poll taken three years ago when 22% of New Jerseyans named him as their favorite president.  Reagan, though, has slipped from the top spot (24%) in 2010 to number two (16%) this year.  Obama increased his share of the Garden State “vote” for best president from 7% three years ago to 14% today.  Rounding out the top five are Abraham Lincoln – 12%, up from 7% in 2010 – and John F. Kennedy – 9% compared to 11% in 2010.  Franklin D. Roosevelt and George Washington each garner 4% of the vote.  The Presidents Day holiday was first established by Congress in 1879 as “Washington’s Birthday,” which is still its official name.”

Murray also discovered that “[a]mong the state’s youngest adults age 18 to 34, Clinton is tops (32%), followed by Obama (17%) and Lincoln (16%).” I’m not surprised! Is it any wonder why Reagan is slipping? And Clinton is holding strong?

It’s a simply matter of age demographics, folks.

Consider this: 19% of the 2012 electorate was in kindergarten (or younger) when Ronald Reagan held this country’s highest elected office. Your Blogger-in-Chief was born two months from the end of Reagan’s first term! My Generation Y compatriots aren’t children of the 80s; we grew up in the 1990s, and the only things of political relevance that we can recall are (1) the relatively awesome national economy and (2) House Republican efforts to impeach Bill Clinton for oral sex in the Oval Office. That’s obviously not the full story of what actually happened, of course. Perjury happened. But that’s what my generation remembers precisely because that’s what the media/school system/popular culture told us to remember.

Few voters 30 and under know anything about the success of Reaganomics. Or how Reagan/Bush stewardship of our foreign policy accelerated the Soviet Empire’s demise and ushering in the “global” age. Or how Bill Clinton initially tried many of Barack Obama’s economically ruinous policies (including health care nationalization) prior to Republicans taking back Congress in November 1994… at which time welfare reform, balanced budgets and the other “positives” of 1990s federal governance occurred.

Civics-challenged. Morally relativistic. And unable to remember a time when the U.S. economy was actually churning out opportunity except for when Bill Clinton held the nation’s top job.

That’s Generation Y. The voters who made the difference in Ohio, Colorado and Florida.

Click here to read the full report and data tables from Monmouth University’s Polling Institute. Then go find a young voter in your family and teach them, to quote Ronald Reagan, “what it was once like in the United States where men were free.” And then locate your local Republican leaders (look for the old men with gray hair) and demand they affect a genuine GOP culture change or get out of the way.

Matt Rooney
About Matt Rooney 8405 Articles
MATT ROONEY is SaveJersey.com's founder and editor-in-chief, a practicing New Jersey attorney, and the host of 'The Matt Rooney Show' on 1210 WPHT every Sunday evening from 7-10PM EST.