A famous aphorist with a fondness for drink (and also something of a statesmen, apparently), Winston Churchill* once said, "show me a young Conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart; show me an old Liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains." Winnie's underlying assumption, of course, is that younger people tend to be lefties, and older people tend to be otherwise--a common enough observation. But it turns out the politics of age are considerably more complicated than Churchill suggested--and right now, they're conspiring against the Republican Party.

It's no secret that the GOP brand is on the decline. At 51 percent to 38 percent, the gap between Democratic and Republican party identification among voters is a full 10 points wider than it was in 2004 (47-44)--wider, in fact, than at any point since the peak of the Reagan Revolution, when Republicans enjoyed a double-digit advantage. And according to a new research report from the Pew Center for the People and the Press, it's young voters who are mostly responsible for Democrats' recent gains. In the under-30 cohort, Democrats trounce Republicans among women (63-28), men (52-38), Southerners (53-38), Midwesterners (61-32), moderates (62-28) and suburbanites (56-34)--often boasting much larger margins than what they're able to scrounge up among older voters in the same demographic. Overall, 58 percent of voters aged 18-29 (i.e., Millennials) call themselves Democrats, while only 33 percent call themselves Republicans. That gap--25 percent--has doubled since 2004. As the Atlantic's Marc Ambinder puts it, this is "the GOP['s] generational time bomb."

Subscribers to the canard of "young liberals and old conservatives" are probably unsurprised. But according to Pew, they should be. That's because history proves them wrong. (See chart above.) When Bill Clinton was elected in 1992, for example, a plurality of voters under 30--47 percent--identified as Republicans. The reason: when they came of age. As the Pew people write: "Age differences in party affiliation are a result of a variety of influences, including... generational differences that reflect the political climate at the time when individuals were forming their political identity and loyalties." That's why the youngest voters in 1992, Generation Xers, were actually more Republican than their elders: "they had come of age politically during a time in which conservative ideas were ascendant and the presidency was held by a popular Republican, Ronald Reagan." Same goes for the second-youngest group--i.e., Generation Jonesers (like Barack Obama) then in their late 20s and early 30--who followed the troubled presidency of Jimmy Carter on TV as tots; they were also more Republican than average. Meanwhile, older Baby Boomers, who'd endured the turbulent Nixon years, were solidly Democratic. The point? When it comes to the Millennials, it's not their age alone that's making them Democrats--it's President George W. Bush.

The good news for the GOP?  Party loyalty isn't forever. Take Generations X and Jones, for example. Born between 1956 and 1976, they leaned Republican throughout the 1990s, and the party still clung to a slight edge among them--47 to 44--as recently as 2004. But the latest Pew polling shows a striking change of heart: currently, 51 percent of voters aged 32 to 52 affiliate with the Democratic Party or lean Democratic, compared with 39 percent who describe themselves as Republicans or lean toward the GOP. Of course, that's bad news for Republicans in the short run. But it just goes to show: if the party manages, against all odds, to put a president in the White House this November, and he manages, against all odds, to overcome a likely Democratic Congress and make a positive lasting impression--well, then maybe some of these "defectors" will come running back to the right, and Republicans can begin to repair the damage that Bush has done.

Your move, Sen. McCain.

*A reader notes that there's some disagreement over whether Churchill actually said this. Damn Internets!