Liberalism ascendant

I like Ross Douthat, a lot. But I hate to agree with Nate Cohn’s rebuttal to Douthat’s claim that Bush’s overreach in the Iraq war is “responsible for liberalism’s current political and cultural ascendance.”

Douthat implies, Cohn claims, that Americans are still conservative. I’m inclined to think that Cohn is correct to say that “we’re witnessing the rise of a new, diverse, and socially moderate generation—one that has allowed Democrats to keep the presidency despite governing as liberals and dividing the electorate along the lines of the two Bush elections. After all, Romney won voters older than 30 (who were eligible to vote in 2000) by 2 percentage points in 2012, but the millennial generation tipped the scales in favor of Obama. These younger voters didn’t just make the difference in 2012, they also cast the decisive ballot in the culture wars.”