I have not read all of the comments, so perhaps someone else has made this somewhat peripheral point.

The difficulty in attracting young people to conservatism is that having a conservative point of view requires some previous education and thoughtfulness.  As a teacher of young people, I can tell you that more often than not, they are not thinkers but feelers, thus the tendency toward liberalism.

We're all familiar with Churchill's comment about being a liberal when young and a conservative when older, and there is much truth in this.  So appealing to the young to try to get their votes means asking them to go against their natural tendencies.

As someone noted above, conservative children tend to come from conservative parents, so the twig has been bent, so to speak.

An appeal such as Rachel suggests walks the line between reason (conservatism) and feelings (liberalism), so it could be valuable.  But it would need to be very quickly followed up by some further education about the long-term benefits resulting from the kinds of sacrifices we are facing, else they will quickly become disenchanted with the whole discussion and stay home.

I appreciate the attempt.  Metaphors can be very illuminating.  The problem I see with the staph infection analogy is that the infection is something that happens to the person.  Our debt situation is (through the agents of our representatives) self-inflicted.

Several months back, I heard Rep. Louie Gohmert give the illustration of a person going to his banker for a very large loan.  When asked what the money was for, he replied that he just couldn't stop spending.  And when asked how he would repay the loan, he frankly admitted that he would not, but, pointing to his infant grandchildren, allowed that they would be repaying the loan.