I wonder if part of it has to do with the fact that we on the right recoil at bean counting when it comes to gender, and thus we don't go out of our way to elevate female writers and thinkers just because they are female, like the left does. In a way, this may be admirable in that it is striving for a pure meritocracy, but perhaps this aversion to bean counting also leads many leaders on the right to inadvertently reinforce, or just ignore, the largely male dominated status quo at conservative institutions.

Another thing: Is it just me, or are a disproportionate number of female writers and pundits on the conservative side drawn mainly from the "socially conservative" leg of the conservative stool. There are exceptions -- Veronique de Rugy comes to mind --  but when I think of a conservative female intellectuals, most of them are social conservatives.

I don't recall where I saw this, but I remember reading about a study that found a positive correlation between social media use and face-to-face interaction time. It makes intuitive sense to me, as most people I know use social media primarily as a way to organize face-to-face interactions, and to keep up with old friends who you wouldn't otherwise have seen (thus you'll have a beer with them when their in town when you might not have otherwise, for instance).

Have a Cigar and Welcome to the Machine, both by Pink Floyd.

The former is anti-capitalist, and the latter pretty much is as well, though it is more vague.

This may be a "problem" among upper-middle class whites, but this is a large, diverse country, and I would submit that a bigger problem is women having children outside of a committed relationship.

I imagine part of it is that you only  see the dumber side of them. When on television, or talking to a random person, they have to stick to the talking points and broad strokes because having an intelligent, deep policy discussion with a random person or on tv is dangerous. What if they say something wrong, or a politically incorrect truth, or something that can be easily taken out of context and that person happens to have a blog. You are screwed. Remember 47%?

I'm sure many are very intelligent, they just have to be more careful than a pundit or scholar.

Thank you, Artur.

I admit, I was annoyed when Christie bear-hugged Obama, but I find the conservative backlash against him immensely frustrating. Except on guns, Christie is a mainstream center-right conservative. I don't understand those who view him as Democratic-lite. One of the big problems the right has had lately is that we view anyone who says anything nice about Obama ever as an Arlen Specter clone who is Democrat-lite. Really!? Save guns, where is Christie not just as conservative as Scott Walker or John Kasich? Bear hugging Obama during Sandy? That's best you can come up with? One, that was merely symbolic and two, if the President is competently aiding you with the worst natural disaster your state has seen in decades, it is perfectly reasonable to praise him, even in the last few days of a Presidential campaign (which isn't to say Christie handled it perfectly, but I don't think it is indicative of his substantive positions).

Why do we need my generation?

Because Mitt Romney would be President today but for voters under 30, and Obama wouldn't have won in 2008 without voters under 35.

I agree on the social issues and shifting to a liberty-based agenda, but I think the party also must address the economic issues of young people to win them over. Yes, social issues are alienating many millennials, but the poor state of the economy (and other challenges that preceded the recession) matter just as much. They clearly are at least skeptical of Democratic policies, but what has the right offered them specifically that would help decrease the financial burden of college (which I don't think is small potatoes at all; recall that Obama spoke as much or more about student debt at college campuses as he did gay marriage) or the insufficient supply of full-time entry-level work, especially for those without four-year college degrees?

Reagan won young people in 1984 by a large margin, larger than he won overall, I believe. Why? I would suggest that most of it had to do with the booming economy and increased opportunities for the young relative to the 1970s.

Oh, and I took that millennial test as well and got 73. I guess I'm just barely in touch with my own generation! What a relief!

This is a long post, so I'll only respond to a few specific things...

Firstly, I think there are three kinds of "fiscally conservative, socially liberal" people. The people who are afraid to call themselves just plain liberals, but who are on all the issues; people like Rob (and to a lesser extent, Jonah) who are more secular conservatives; and then there are people who are what I would call soft libertarians, but are afraid to call themselves libertarians for fear of being lumped in with the Randians and pot-smoking college kids. I do think people who fall into the latter two groups can accurately refer to themselves as "fiscally conservative, socially liberal", even if in practice though most who self-id that way fall into the first camp.

As for gay marriage, well, I don't think allowing gay marriage is an infringement on religious liberty. As far as I can tell, no church is required to perform same-sex marriages. If we're talking about definitions, well, the fact is that civil marriage and religious marriage are distinct things, though they share a name. As long as you separate the two, I see no problem.

There are alternatives to corn syrup, which incentives the producers of corn to keep the price as low as possible. Plus, the quantity of corn produced can be easily increased to meet higher demand.

There is no reliable alternative to college that delivers the same value, and it is a lot harder to expand the quantity of 4-year institutions than corn. The only response to increased demand, then, is to raise the price.

I agree with others about the difference in size. Iceland could do what it did because it was so small that the global impact of its policy of letting banks fail was very small. If the US, or even Britain, had let the banks fail, the world economy would have spiraled out of control into a depression.

No wonder social conservatism is unpopular among the young: calling men cowards, brutes whose sexuality needs to be "restrained" in order to have any worth, at the mercy of their hormones. Seriously, this article talks about about men as if they're animals!

If social conservatives want to relevant beyond the devout and the old, they need to stop insulting potential supporters.

I believe every school in my state, Colorado, has an armed police officer around most of the time, which seems acceptable to me (I believe I read something that said Columbine would have been far worse but for the cop in that school).

Beyond that, however, I think militarizing the schools would be a bad thing, for reasons others have stated,but also impractical. Let's be honest, the reason Sandy Hook shocked us was because school shootings are incredibly rare. When dealing with any public problem, you get diminishing returns on resources spent the less common the problem is. It would seem to me that school shootings are rare enough that it would require enormous amounts of funding for small gains.

It's true that Murphy-ism does have that problem. We don't want a bunch of "me-too Republicans" a la Schwarzenegger running the party. However, let's be honest, how much power do the Murphys of the world have in the party, really?

Yes, Romney was a more moderate candidate who still lost (though I would argue that it was that other Mormon governor, Huntsman, who was the true Murphy-ite), but do you honestly believe that a Perry or Bachmann would have done better? He didn't win the nomination because Mike Murphy and David Frum hatched some conspiracy to force him on us, he won because he was the only candidate who didn't self-destruct.

I would also point out that Romney hasn't actually been a moderate substantively since 2006. He didn't endorse SSM in '12, nor immigration reform.

The majority of the county now supports SSM. Four states voted against the traditionalist position on ballot issues. When you are the part of a fast shrinking minority you will look, fairly or not, as an aggressor.

QFT

I worry about all the Murphy criticism. Many of the people criticizing him here seem intent on taking the side of unobtainable perfection over the very achievable good. The history of conservative success (and liberal success, believe it or not) involves making concessions on some issues where the broad middle of the country disagrees with them. Reagan conceded (implicitly and through his actions) that he wasn't going to dismantle Medicare nor was he going to return us to a pre-Griswald v. Connecticut world. Tough for conservatives, particularly those of the time, but it payed off. The Reagan revolution ushered in much needed deregulation, tax reform, and at least partially led to a revolution in law enforcement in 90's and the end of "welfare as we know it".

Similarly, I could imagine a Republican today conceding on SSM and immigration, as Murphy advocates, in order to win over the broad middle on deficit reduction and government reform and reduction.