In other news today, the sky is blue, water is wet, and Glenn Beck is still a douche:

The tea party is failing to woo young voters despite a loose structure that could make it easier for those under 30 to achieve leadership roles, analysts and political activists say as the grass-roots movement prepares to flex its muscles in midterm elections.

A survey released Oct. 21 by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics showed that only 11 percent of those 18 to 29 consider themselves supporters of the tea party, and analysts say the leaderless movement’s ties to social conservatism and rhetoric in favor of an earlier America are hampering its appeal.

Despite widespread voter anger ahead of Tuesday’s midterm elections, the tea party has been a hard sell to young voters because many equate joining with embracing conservative social values, said Peter Levine, director of CIRCLE, a Tufts University group that conducts research on the political involvement of young Americans. He said this holds true even for those who would otherwise identify with the party’s call for stricter fiscal conservatism.

I can’t imagine why a generation raised in a more global, tech-savvy, internet heavy world would be resistant to a movement that wants to send us all back to the political and social Dark Ages.

However, the best quote, IMO, is this one:

Some tea party backers also note the generational gap when it comes to all the talk about history. Joel Pollak, a tea party-endorsed Republican trying to unseat Democrat Jan Schakowsky in Illinois’ 9th Congressional District, said young voters’ lack of Cold War memories prevents them from recognizing the threat that overreaching government policies pose to American freedom.

“Young people today grew up with very little knowledge of communism and socialism,” the 33-year-old Pollak said.

Wait, what? What possible Cold War memories could a 33-year old have, given they’d have been 11-12 years old when the Berlin Wall came down and the USSR started its eventual collapse?

Hell, I was in high school when all that happened and the full importance of those events didn’t sink in until later, since I had bigger priorities at the time, like getting a date to the prom and going to school football games. I find it *very* difficult to believe that a suburban kid who would’ve been in middle school in Illinois back then has any freaking clue what communism or socialism were really all about.

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