Conservative Cheerleaders

06/12/10

Letter To The Editor

RE: Conservatism's cool, Miami Herald 06/12/2010


Nicholas Rohrhoff, Chairman of the Medical Student Section of the FloridaMedical Association claims that young people should evaluate conservative principles, including limited government.

Well,he may be unaware that many of his peers, including medial students like him at the University of Miami, significantly benefit from government intervention into medical education.

For example, many students rely on government subsidized loans to finance their education. He also seems to forget that most physician training is subsidized by the federal government.Today less than 5 percent of medical school revenues comes from tuition and fees. Instead, medical schools rely heavily on federal and state support. Once medical students receive their degree they continue with their Graduate Medical Education, i.e. residency or specialty training. The largest source of funding for graduate medical education is the federal Medicare program, which reimburses teaching hospitals for both the direct cost of operating these programs. Florida’s Medicaid program also provides funding to graduate medical education.

I hope that he appreciates that having received government funding and subsidies for his medical education and training he is also guaranteed a much higher earning potential than many other Americans. But may be not, because now he wants lower taxes too!

I really have a hard time to understand this conservative hypocrisy. For me its nothing else but an expression of egocentric individualism. So, please try your best and be a good doctor but stay away from political cheerleading.


Bernd Wollschlaeger,MD,FAAFP,FASAM


16899 NE 15thAvenue ,North Miami Beach, FL 33162

Phone: 305-940-8717
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Conservatism's cool
BY NICHOLAS J. ROHRHOFF
NJROHRHOFF@MED.MIAMI.EDU

In mid-term elections, voter turnout defines success. To win, it is imperative to target likely voters and mobilize sympathetic yet diffident constituencies to the polls. Barack Obama's successful courtship of young voters in 2008 cast John McCain's GOP as the party of yesterday -- a group of old, white men out of touch with an increasingly diverse and engaged youth -- never to regain electoral clout.

This was not a triumph in the battle of ideas.

Because the adolescent prerequisite of peer affirmation to consider anything persists in this age group, conservative policies were not even entertained by many young voters as potential solutions to America's problems.

The Obama campaign manipulated this phenomenon brilliantly by wooing young voters not with policy prescriptions but retail politics. Before the Iowa caucuses, he skipped an AARP event to attend a hip-hop concert. And he was far ahead of other candidates in high-tech outreach through e-mail, YouTube and social networking media. The results were a 135-percent increase in the Democratic youth vote from 2004 and an electoral prize that set him on a trajectory to the White House.

In the general election Obama was the candidate with whom young voters would rather have a beer. Reporters who covered both campaigns marveled at how many more young volunteers the Obama campaign had at the ready. Supporting him became the cool thing to do.

His personal appeal to the demographic drew them to his party. Gallup Poll data indicate that in 2000, 36 percent of young voters identified themselves as Democrats and 35 percent as Republicans. In 2008, 45 percent in that age group indicated affiliation with the Democratic Party -- only 26 percent with Republicans.

This support extended from politics to policy. The same poll reported 69 percent of young voters said the government should do more to solve problems whereas only 27 percent said government does too much. In both style and substance, conservatives had lost touch with the next generation of Americans.

How then to make conservatism cool again? Enter former Florida House Speaker and current Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Marco Rubio. It is reasonable to suggest that Rubio would not want to collect votes based on the perception that he is the coolest candidate. He is, by all accounts, a serious policy person. His book, 100 Innovative Ideas for Florida's Future, was accompanied by ``idea-raisers'' held across the state where citizens could contribute their views.

Appearing a decade younger than his 38 years as he effortlessly transitions from English to Spanish and back, he plays flag football and is married to a former Miami Dolphins cheerleader.

When asked recently about the notion that he was the Republican Obama, referring to the president's recent slide in the polls, he quipped, ``I'm not sure people even want to be the Democrat Obama these days.''

Still, he would win any poll -- in a landslide -- on which candidate young voters would most like to join for a beer.

Yet his distaste for identity politics is clear: He defines himself simply as a conduit to advance a set of ideas that has made this country the greatest in the history of the world. In a less Herculean task but one of no less consequence, he could serve as the catalyst to broaden the appeal of conservatism to incipient voters.

Rubio seeks election to the U.S. Senate to stand up to the Obama agenda and offer a clear alternative. A Harvard Institute of Politics poll released in March suggests there is an opportunity to persuade young voters with that platform. Only 38 percent of young people approve of President Obama's handling of the deficit and a majority disapprove of his management of the economy (51 percent) and healthcare (53 percent).

Most telling, just 14 percent of those polled attending a four-year college believe that it will be easy to find a job after graduation.

In 2008, voters under 30 made up 14 percent of Florida's electorate. Gov. Charlie Crist's decision to run as an independent amplifies the importance of each of those votes. Though young people are unlikely to vote in mid-term elections, in this three-way race they could be decisive. Rubio trails Crist in a recent St. Petersburg Times/Miami Herald/Bay News 9 poll by just 3 points.

Rubio has been presented as a plausible counterweight to the president for many reasons -- the most significant comparison may manifest in the electoral etiology of his meteoric rise. An aggressive approach will lead young people to evaluate conservative principles -- limited government, low taxes, and boundless opportunity -- on the merits.

If his overtures succeed, a statewide electoral victory propelled by young voters could begin a movement that energizes, modernizes and unifies the Republican Party before returning them to power in Washington.

Nicholas J. Rohrhoff is chairman of the Medical Student Section of the Florida Medical Association and a student at the University of Miami School of Medicine.