Campaign '04: The Right's New Wing

(5 of 9)

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.

So what binds the new young conservatives? What links the urban libertarians, the exurban social conservatives and the kids like Custer who can't easily be labeled? After interviewing dozens of young conservatives over the past five months, I think the glue is more cultural than political: paradoxically, these kids see themselves as campus rebels. They believe they are "the new counterculture," as YAF official Patrick Coyle says--ridiculed by liberal professors, shouted down by student leftists and betrayed by a Republican Party afraid of alienating moderates.

Listen to Martin Dawson, 22, who will be a senior this fall at Fordham University in New York: "The Republican Party is becoming what it criticized in 1994--the party of Washington power, the party of Big Government, Big Spending and Big Business." Even those who support the party and the President sound like outsiders. Says Alexa Moutevelis, a 20-year-old Washington and Lee University student who has Bush stickers on her car: "I'm a conservative because I'm antiestablishment." Ohio University senior Clayton Henson, 22, uses similar language: "The left controls the campus ... They are the establishment now. They are the reactionary ones."