PAYING HOMAGE: Students participating in a Young Americas Foundation program stand on a hill overlooking the old Reagan ranch in Santa Barbara, Calif.
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It's important to note the liberal exceptions to this trend: kids are turning left on marijuana and gay marriage. Nearly 40% of first-year students now support legalizing pot (the most since the '70s), and an astonishing 59% of 18-year-olds think same-sex couples should be able to legally wed. (Only about 30% of all Americans do.) But in the context of the other numbers, those positions may indicate a libertarian rather than leftist orientation. The Libertarian Party, which advocates minimal government interference in people's lives, has members on 306 campuses, twice the figure of 1997-98, according to James Lark III, a campus organizer and former party chairman.
Why the move right on many issues? Demographers say it has something to do with coming of age in the '80s and '90s. "If your formative experience is Ronald Reagan as opposed to John Kennedy, then that's going to have an impact on how you think about the world," says William Galston, a former Clinton official who now directs the University of Maryland's Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.
Today's college kids were quite young when Reagan was President, but thanks to YAF, ISI and the Leadership Institute — all helmed by Reaganites — the former President has an outsize presence on campus. Former Reagan officials Edwin Meese III (Reagan's second Attorney General), Jeane Kirkpatrick (his first U.N. ambassador) and Bay Buchanan (his first Treasurer) have all spoken on college campuses through YAF, and Reagan's son Michael raises money for the group. In 1998 it purchased the Reagans' old ranch near Santa Barbara, Calif., and now brings 1,000 students there every year to bask in Reaganiana (look in the bathroom for the Liberty Bell showerhead) and study conservative thought at a multimillion-dollar conference center nearby.
At the National Conservative Student Conference earlier this month, the students cheered nearly every time Reagan was mentioned — which is saying something, given that the name of the recently deceased President was invoked constantly. The conference's souvenir T shirt featured Reagan's image and the words THE REAGAN REVOLUTION LIVES! On the first morning, when the students were invited to the podium to introduce themselves, several said the 40th President had inspired their conservatism.
No one mentioned Bush. Which brings us back to this year's race. Although students are moving right on many issues, the President isn't necessarily benefiting. In 2000 Al Gore beat Bush among 18-to 29-year-olds by only 2 percentage points, but recent polls show Kerry with a double-digit lead among the young. (The race is a virtual tie overall.) Of course, very few conservative students will vote for Kerry, but most of the kids who attended the conference didn't seem eager to become field troops for the President either. As National Review editor Rich Lowry noted on the conservative magazine's website the day after he spoke at the conference, "What was most notable about this year was just how many smart young conservatives out there seem to think that there are no important differences between Bush and Kerry."
One student laid out a conservative case for Kerry: "When a Democrat is in office and proposes the same policies that Bush has proposed, Republicans act Republican and kill them," said Aakash Raut, 23, a senior at the University of Illinois at Springfield, in a heated debate with pro-Bush students. "And you have actually more conservative government than you do if a Republican is in the White House."
Raut says he will "probably" vote for Bush anyway, but he and other kids spent hours battering the President — his proposal to grant legal status to some illegal immigrants (which they see as unfair to legal immigrants and dangerous at a time when terrorists may be sneaking across the borders), the increase in federal spending (which they fear will eventually lead to tax hikes) and his expansion of Medicare (which is an "entitlement program, something a conservative always opposes," as Buchanan, sister of former presidential candidate Patrick, told the conference). Like her brother, Buchanan criticized Republicans for not doing enough to arrest the social changes wrought by globalization (multilingualism, low-wage immigration, outsourcing). "This is good for corporate America, which owns Congress, so they do nothing," she told the students.
In some ways, Bush bashing from so-called paleoconservatives like the Buchanans is nothing new. Just as revanchist leftists fight with the New Democrats for control of the Democratic Party, G.O.P. traditionalists — America-firsters, Fundamentalist Christians — have long battled neoconservatives from the right.
But many of the new young conservatives smash these ideological bins. They define their conservatism on an issue-by-issue basis. While they care deeply about abortion, for instance, few students at the conference mentioned gay marriage. Roger Custer, the 22-year-old conference coordinator who graduated in May from Ithaca College in New York, illustrates this cafeteria-menu conservatism: he favors the Iraq war but thinks Bush should have treated our allies better; he wants abortion outlawed but backs civil unions for gays; he would abolish the Department of Education but would rather balance the budget than cut taxes. Custer enthusiastically supported Bush in 2000 but says he will only reluctantly vote for Bush this time.