newswire: 7/20/2020
- Since 1990, Republicans have consistently elected a greater share of political newcomers to the House than Democrats. Over time, Republicans have seen a steady inflow of outsiders while Democrats have remained reliant on traditional incumbents with experience. (Brookings Institution)
- NH: With the ascendancy of Boomers into Congress in the early 1990s (think especially of Newt Gingrich’s famous and successful “contract with America” in 1994), Republicans have liked to think of themselves less as a “governing party” and more as an individualistic cadre of principled critics and libertarians. Since the ascendancy of Xers into Congress over the last decade (think especially of the Tea Party movement), you can add the words populist, outsider, and renegade.
- These trends should result in a party much less likely to respect governing experience than ideology and grass-roots passion. And elected representatives in this party should be much more open to amateurs with little or no background in public office.
- In this Brookings study, that’s just what Jonathan Rauch and Raymond La Raja find. Since 1990 (and in 2016 in particular), Republican House incumbents are much more likely to have been defeated in a primary by an inexperienced challenger--meaning, someone who has never before held political office. It follows that a larger share of GOP House freshmen are newcomers to politics than Democratic House freshmen.
- Because of this insurgent bias, older GOP incumbents have been easier to unseat in recent decades. Also, because this outsider movement was spearheaded by late-wave Boomers and early-wave Xers, earlier-born Boomers and Silent GOP leaders who believed in experienced government were more likely to be perceived as deadwood worthy to be thrown out.
- As a result, the average age of House GOP leaders (57) is much younger than the average age of House Democratic leaders (71). The list of top Democratic leaders (Pelosi, Hoyer, Waters, Lowey) reads like a who’s who of the Silent Generation. Reps born before 1950 comprise 15% of all House Republicans versus 25% of all House Democrats.
- Yet not only are House GOP members less likely to be very old, they are also less likely to be very young. For the most part late-wave Xers and Millennials just don’t want to join the insurgent and outsider bandwagon. Millennials in particular actually prefer expertise and experience in government--the better to use government effectively. (See “Younger Democrats Want a VP Candidate More Liberal than Biden.”) Reps born after 1975 comprise 9% of all House Republicans versus 13% of all House Democrats.
- Another way of summarizing the situation is to say the age distribution of House Democrats is much more “spread out” than that of House Republicans. The Democrats have more early wave Boomers and Silent at one end and more Millennials at the other. Republicans are much more tightly distributed around Americans who were born in between--that is, who came of age with Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan. (See “Does the Democratic Party Need a Facelift?”)
- Before the Millennials began to surge into political office over the last two or three elections, the GOP liked to think of themselves as the “youth party” in the House. In some ways, they still are. But in other ways, they no longer are. Funny how new generational currents ensure that last decade’s next big thing becomes this decade’s last big thing.
