What If Millennials Start To Hate Obamacare?

Alex Roarty | Nextgov | October 24, 2013

Republicans are searching for an in with Millennials, and they think Obamacare's glitchy rollout is it.

Next to minorities, there's no larger voting bloc more resistant to the Republican Party. (President Obama won 18 to 29 year olds by at least 23 points in both of his campaigns.) GOP leaders feared the party's positions on social issues like gay marriage and immigration had alienated a generation of voters.

But then the Affordable Care Act's online exchanges went live, or tried to, on Oct. 1. Now, with everyone from comedian Jon Stewartto the satirical Onion web site mocking the program's rollout, Republicans see a chance to convince young voters that big-government solutions favored by Democrats don't work.

It's an argument resting on an assumption about young people: Even if they possess an overall liberal bent, youths reserve enough skepticism for big government – and big institutions generally – to make them receptive to the GOP's message. The heart of a fiscal conservative, they hope, lies inside every Millennial.