Is this the beginning of the Reagan Teenagers?
Politico reports the first wave of new Republicanism as Virginia’s Eric Cantor, Congressman and House Minority Whip, chose Rep Kevin McCarthy as his top deputy.
McCarthy is just completing his first term in the House. He’s a former chair of the Young Republican National Federation. And he’s the top deputy to the #2 Republican in the House. McCarthy’s 43 and Cantor is 45. This is the start of the next generation of leadership I like to call Reagan Teenagers, folks who cut their teeth in politics and made their first votes during the Reagan years.
House Minority Leader John Boehner is in an odd position. He was part of the Gingrich Revolution that authored the Contract with America and led an activist Republican party to leadership at odds with then-GOP leader Bob Michel.
Now Boehner has a Cantor-McCarthy tandem ready to do what Boehner and Newt did in 1994.
What does it mean? A Republican Party more in tune with blogs, the internet, and the issues that confront middle class America and a connection we haven’t seen, well, we haven’t seen since the early 90s.
The national generational shift of the Republican Party may have just begun today.
