Guest MINDSETTER™Leah Towe: Winning the Future

Guest MINDSETTER™Leah Towe: Winning the Future

“Why should it matter who marries who? We’re all people.” … “A woman should be allowed to do what she wants with her body -- whether or not to have an abortion is her decision.” In American society where the social left is becoming the norm, it is no surprise that amongst the Millenial generation (18-29 year olds), it is common day to know someone who is a homosexual, someone who has had to abort an unborn child, or someone that lives day to day on welfare and wouldn’t be able to pass a drug test because he or she smokes marijuana.

Millenials

It is for reasons like these that it is so very common for the Millenial generation, my generation, to consider themselves politically Democrats rather than Republicans. It is because of social issues such as these, issues that young adults feel fully intertwined with, that they choose to vote Democrat rather than Republican. But what most Millenials fail to recognize, is that their economic views align much closer with those of the Republican Party. 

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Ask a group of young adults if they’d prefer larger government or smaller, higher taxes or lower, and you’ll hear a pretty resounding “Of course I’d like less government control and less money taken out of my check.” But how can you look at your homosexual brother and vote against his desire to marry? Or look at your best friend and tell her that she needs to raise a child at age seventeen?

For us Millenials, the gratification of knowing that we are voting for those we love and care about rather than that paycheck that we haven’t really started earning yet, the answer is easy. The youth of my generation are apt time and time again to be drawn by their emotions into voting for what we’ve been raised to find socially acceptable, while failing to prioritize our greater fiscal future.

This is precisely why a trend can be seen in voters becoming much more conservative as they grow older, due to the immense burden that many liberal fiscal reforms impose upon taxpayers’ wallets. It is for this very reason that I suggest a realignment of the social platform for the Republican Party. Is it possible that this will scare away some staunch southern Republicans, or conservative Catholics? Yes, but I believe that in a society that is quickly moving towards an acceptance of people’s social free will and liberty, the Republican Party needs to either adjust its stance, or be left behind.

The Republican Party

With the recent victories in the House of Representatives and the Senate, it appears that the Republican Party is doing quite well. But in the Northeast, this is clearly not the case. In states like Rhode Island and Massachusetts, Republican candidates who appear much stronger and more experienced are losing because of this emotional divide.

The American people, especially the Millenial youth, will consistently vote for changes that they will experience the next day, rather than changes in their earnings that will take years to come. In a country where the vast majority of people find themselves socially liberal yet fiscally conservative, it is time for the Republican Party to ease away from its medieval views on key matters such as gay marriage and abortion in order to win the American populace.

Without a change in position on such matters, I fear it is inevitable that the citizens of the United States will have yet another Democratic President in 2016, a president who will misrepresent our fiscal views so that these key social views are upheld. As both a member of the Republican Party and the Millenial generation, I sympathize with the wants and needs of both groups; I am hopeful that the Republican Party can evolve and move forward together with the future of our country.

A Massachusetts native, Leah Towe is a senior at Providence College. She majors in Political Science, and minors in Spanish and Latin American Studies. Leah is the president of Pi Sigma Alpha and the secretary of the PC Republicans.