The advanced age of the Fox News audience tells you everything you need to know about the topics it covers, the look of its most prominent personalities, and its many advertisements for pharmaceutical solutions for older gentlemen who still like to get it on. Similarly, the advanced age of Republican voters explains the contours of the GOP agenda. Democrats have a substantial edge with voters under 35 while Republicans are more likely to be on the older side of middle age and septuagenarians. The beauty of the over-65 set is that they are reliable voters. The bad news about them is that they are not long for this Earth, and they are not always in tune with the fears, hopes, and dreams of voters who will be around for decades to come.

How does the age profile of the Republican base shape the party? Back in 2012, I had the good fortune to attend the Republican National Convention in Tampa, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was hobnobbing with the exact same people that had cheered on Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984. One friend, a left-wing essayist, told me about a delegate he had met—a single mother who’d been in her late 20s at the tail end of Reagan’s first term, and who capitalized on the economic recovery by going into the then-booming office-furniture business. Companies were starting to revamp their offices to install cubicles and computers, and she was there to sell them swivel chairs and desks. The Reagan years were the best years of her life. She was making money, she found love, lost it, and found it again. America was in full bloom. How could she not be nostalgic for those years? It’s hardly surprising that she’d contrast the Obama years unfavorably with a time when she was healthy and happy, and when life seemed full of promise. So why wouldn’t she want the party to keep preaching that old-time Reagan religion of supply-side tax cuts? Is it any surprise that even youngish Republicans like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio sing the virtues of Saint Ronald, even though they were still in short pants when he first came into office?