Juan Williams on the GOP's Youth Problem

Today The Hill ran an interesting piece from Juan Williams entitled “How the GOP can capture the youth vote next year.”  Williams’ basic logic is that some polling shows a slight decline in Millennials’ Democratic allegiance and a slight increase in their enthusiasm for Republicans, leaving an opening for Republicans to woo this important electorate.  The only challenge seems to be that Williams doesn’t actually know how they’d go about that, save for tackling entitlement reforms.

Bizarrely, rather than making a case for Republicans, Williams makes a very strong case for why Millennials support Obama, and by extension, his party: 

“[Y]ounger Americans are more worried about a tight job market’s long-term impact on their ability to buy a home or save for retirement…That is why polls show the number one priority for young Americans is increased federal spending to get employers to hire more workers. Young people also want more dollars dedicated to education, another point of difference with older voters. That is where President Obama comes into play and so far he stands apart from Republicans and Democrats in appealing to the youth vote. During the first two years of his presidency, Obama has overhauled federal student loan programs, budgeted $30 billion in the stimulus to make college more affordable and, as part of the new healthcare law, has given young people the right to stay on their parents’ insurance plan up to the age of 26."

Williams never gets around to making an equally persuasive case for Millennials' GOP support.  But while the title of Williams’ piece over-promises, it does beg an interesting question:  What would a pro-youth GOP plan look like?  How can Republicans appeal to Millennials if the needs and wants of their generation run completely counter to the anti-government spending ideology that inspires the Republican base? 

At the very end of his piece, Williams alludes to Republicans introducing "a pro-youth agenda."  Given their record on health care, on Dream, on tax breaks for the wealthiest 1%, I'd settle for seeing their version of a not anti-youth agenda.  Where Williams sees opportunity for the GOP, I see a big challenge: an ideological incongruency between their party and the largest generation in American history.