Republicans do badly with young voters, and one of the main reasons is that they’re seen as uncool. This is probably unfair — it’s not Republicans who are imposing college speech codes on students — but it’s the perception.
As a reader of my blog named Jeff Wimble wrote:
“Everything comes down to the movie ‘Footloose.’ For a large majority of people, the political question is, ‘How would the sanctimonious preacher from the movie ‘Footloose’ feel about this subject?’ They answer the question, and then take the opposite position.
“This mind-set is absolutely ingrained in a lot of people my age (a couple of years younger than Gen-X). For every preachy moral conservative I’ve met in real life, I’ve seen 20 on TV. For each Baptist I know in real life, I’ve seen 10 in movies. To me, they are all the preacher from ‘Footloose.’ ”
OK, the media do their best to give that impression — for example, playing up the unfortunate rape comments of Missouri Republican candidate Todd Akin, and playing down the equally unfortunate rape comments of Colorado Democratic legislator Joe Salazar.
But it’s also true that the GOP doesn’t do as much as it can to counter the “Footloose” factor. So here are a couple of suggestions.
First, get rid of the federally mandated 21-year-old drinking age. Introduced by Republicans (it was spearheaded by Elizabeth Dole) in the 1980s, it was always a lousy idea. The result has been more, not less, alcohol abuse on campus, as student drinkers have moved from public venues, where there was supervision, to dorm rooms and frat houses, where there’s less.
And it’s fundamentally unfair. At 18, people can sign contracts, get married and sign up for student loans that will haunt them for decades. They can join the military and go off to die in foreign lands. But federal law presumes they’re too immature to have a beer.
Would the preacher from “Footloose” support repealing the federal drinking-age mandate? No. And that’s yet another reason for Republicans to do so.
Cellphones are another place where young people are oppressed by The Man. As of this year, unlocking your cellphone — putting in a new SIM card so that you can use it with the carrier of your choice — is a felony for which you can potentially get five years in prison and a half-million-dollar fine.
This benefits cellphone carriers, who can lock you into their networks — but not the users of cellphones, a group that includes pretty much everyone under 30. The College Republicans have already come out in favor of repealing this prohibition; their older counterparts — you know, the ones in Congress — should follow their lead.
As a bonus, this ban actually comes courtesy of a librarian. You see, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act prohibits something called “circumvention” technology — and leaves interpretation of that broad yet vague term to the Librarian of Congress, who recently ruled in favor of the carriers.
In fact, the GOP should take the lead in revising the DMCA (and other onerous intellectual-property laws). The act generally lets motion-picture and record-industry moguls exploit their consumers, who are disproportionately young. It’s been used to shut down many music-sharing sites, readers for the blind, and other technologies.
The DMCA was supposed to be used to stop piracy, but because of its vagueness and draconian penalties, it’s being deployed as a way for entrenched companies to protect their business models. If cellphone companies are worried about enforcing their contracts, fine — but we don’t enforce contracts by putting people in jail. You’re not a “pirate” if you unlock your cellphone.
Finally, young people suffer under the burden of student loans, often incurred in the process of getting degrees that turn out to be worthless. Republicans should press hard for limits on this indebtedness and on universities’ ability to raise tuition without limit. More, they should investigate and regulate higher education’s often-dishonest representations made to prospective students.
There are a lot of opportunities along these lines, and a smart, young, libertarian-leaning Republican in the Senate — like, say, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio — could get a lot of mileage out of seizing them, both personally and in terms of brightening the GOP image.
Will the Republicans be smart enough to seize this opportunity? Sadly, history suggests not.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a law professor at the University of Tennessee.