GOP in Danger of Losing Younger Generation of Voters Over Climate Policies: Report

Republicans may be overplaying their hand with unflinching opposition to the Green New Deal and losing the younger generation of voters. 

That’s according to reporting from Politico, which found that some GOP strategists worry that the short term gain of using the public’s confusion over the policy and wariness of the cost of restructuring the economy may be offset by the conservative movement becoming alienated from today’s youth for years. 

“There are a lot of areas where millennials are a bit more progressive than I wish they were,” said Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson. “Republicans need to do a better job of speaking to them.”

But it’s not just millennials. Per Politico:

Recent polling (pdf) from CNN, as Common Dreams reported earlier this week, shows that the climate is the most important issue for Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents. Some 96 percent of voters polled cited the crisis as either “very” or “somewhat” important. 

The debate has shifted enough in recent years that decades of Republican resistance to even acknowledging the issue are being cast aside in favor of acceptance. 

“Denying the basic existence of climate change is no longer a credible position,” GOP consultant Whit Ayers told The New York Times on Wednesday.

But that doesn’t mean Republican lawmakers—other than President Donald Trump, who once said climate change is a Chinese hoax plot to hurt American businesses—are embracing solutions like the Green New Deal. 

“The president is the leading policymaker for better or for worse,” said Rory Cooper, a lobbyist with ties to former Republican leadership, “and this is not a priority of his administration.”