Carville: Republicans Really Are the Grand OLD Party

By Paul Bedard, Washington Whispers

The Ragin' Cajun is hot about the media coverage of the Tax Day conservative tea parties. But James Carville isn't one of those liberals who think the press should have ignored the events. He wishes there had been wall-to-wall coverage to highlight those who now represent the GOP base. "I say the media didn't cover them enough," he told me during an interview about his upcoming red-meat book, 40 More Years, How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation. "I wish they would have been there 24 hours a day. I mean, I couldn't imagine anybody, like, identifying with those old—the average age at the thing must have been 76," he said. Part of the thesis, grimly acknowledged by some Republican advisers, is that the party has lost the youth vote, something that started in 2004 at the height of the Iraq war. And with that trend, he said, the party is in trouble. What's more, he said that it also shows that the GOP has lost the Reagan touch with kids. "Reagan always did better with younger voters," Carville said. "He was responsible for bringing in a whole generation of younger people to the party."