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Jackie Curtiss, National Committeewoman for the Young Republican Federation of Alabama, sparked headlines by taking issue with her party’s language on social issues at the Republican National Convention – specifically, abortion, abstinence-only education, and the morning-after pill. But the 22-year-old is pro-life, and she’s not worried that the Republican Party will drift away from its traditional values. “We are going to be the pro-life party, and the more traditional party, but we need to make our language welcoming to everybody,” she told Emily Kaiser on Minnesota Public Radio.
While Curtiss and others like her are easy to hold up as proof that younger Republicans are less invested in damaging social policy positions than their party elders – and indeed, for many younger right-leaning voters, social issues are of little-to-no importance when compared to fiscal issues – Curtiss’s statements are only partly to do with a pragmatic approach to sex ed and shifting opinions on social issues. They’re also a powerful form of branding.
That’s something that was recognized by Curtiss’s fellow guests on the Daily Circuit program on Minnesota Public Radio, where the topic of the day was “What issues matter to young Republicans?” Karin Agness, founder of the Network of Enlightened Women, a group of conservative college-age women, said, that “in terms of messaging, and in terms of trying to reach out to young people,” debt and job creation should be the primary concerns of the Republican Party.
For some, the social positions held by the party are a turn-off; for many more, they’re seen as a distraction from talking about the economy. And for Agness and Curtiss, debt is where social and fiscal conservatism intersect. “The debt is a moral issue,” says Agness. “It is unfair for the generation now to leave the next generation and future generations with the tab.” Charlie, a young Republican caller, expressed frustration with the energy devoted by his party and its constituents to the abortion debate. “We feel that there should be that much anger about the debt,” he said.
The argument for debt as a social issue seems to be this: student loans and a weak economy prevent young voters from starting families or getting married, blocking their access to a particular conception of the American Dream. And by holding up a 50s-esque picture of success – one with a strict progression from school to marriage to kids – the Republican Party can focus its attention on strictly “fiscal” issues while still prioritizing a certain form of family and way of life. On Tuesday, Rick Santorum gave a speech touching on national and personal debt which pointed out just that – “Graduate from high school, work hard, and get married before you have children and the chance you will ever be in poverty is just two percent,” he told RNC crowds.
At the RNC, events like the “Woman Up!” Pavilion strove to turn the conversation away from social issues – and even suggested that the “war on women” was a fiction concocted by the Obama administration to stop people from talking about the economy. “I think that because unemployment is so high, Democrats think it’s much easier to win over women voters if they talk about these social issues. I think that’s a risky gamble for them, because I so firmly believe that this will be an election about the economy,” one woman told The New York Times.
Curtiss is at the convention as a delegate for Rick Santorum, and characterizing her as especially progressive on social issues would be a mistake. On one hand, a step away from restricting emergency contraception and loosening up language around abortion is an encouraging sign of a more flexible and socially progressive Republican Party of the future. But if Curtiss and her counterparts are indeed more concerned with changing how their party is perceived and how it sounds than updating its social positions, then that points to issues down the road.
A Republican Party of the future where regressive positions on contraception and women’s rights are disguised with moderate and more appealing language is one which is potentially trickier to engage with. Curtiss’s challenge to her party elders is a sign that young Republicans are getting savvier when it comes to re-packaging and re-imagining their party to attract youth votes. It’s a little early to tell whether it also means they’re getting more progressive.
