Conservatives Aren’t Connecting With Young Women. It’s Time To Try Something New.

Bethany Miller’s sister calls her every election cycle with the same question: Who do I vote for?

Even though she leans conservative, she still struggles to cut through the noise. “She was having a hard time understanding what all this political jargon meant,” said Miller, managing editor at the Conservateur, in a recent interview with The Daily Wire. “We should be able to bring it down to the everyday experience.”

Miller has become an expert at identifying the gap between believing something and being able to explain it to another person, especially to someone on the opposite end of the political spectrum. 

Her clients range from churches and advocacy groups to campaigns and the military, and the request is almost always to fix messaging that just won’t land. For conservative women especially, there is a huge gap between the truth and the Left doing a better job at marketing its positions.

Miller encountered this phenomenon while teaching a class of high school girls at her church. One student reiterated the same tired talking points that conservatives have been hearing for years. When asked about her perception of conservatives, Miller said she immediately spewed the “barefoot and pregnant” line. 

“And they’re gonna force us … we’re oppressed, and we don’t have rights,” she added. Miller didn’t expect to hear that type of talk still floating around, but she realized it’s still “very, very, relevant.”

Part of the problem, in Miller’s view, is that conservatives have let that caricature exist without counteracting it for too long. In some cases, they’ve added to it.

She pointed to the recent rise of “trad wife” content online as an example of branding that may go too far in the wrong direction. “Conservative women are diverse,” she said. “It doesn’t mean you have to be a MAHA mom … you can be a conservative mom and crunchy.” 

“I think the struggle has always been conservative women can’t be put in a box,” Miller added. “And I think that’s where we’ve kind of shot ourselves in the foot — letting this whole trad wife thing run, because it’s not a good look to be restrictive.”

That doesn’t mean staying home with kids is the problem, she insisted. “Being a trad wife is a beautiful thing,” Miller said, adding that the key is to approach it as being one option of many that are all welcome and accepted in the conservative movement.

Miller is part of the exact demographic that feels so far out of reach for conservatives. She’s in her mid-20s, unmarried, working full-time in a metropolitan area, so it would make sense to assume she’s progressive. She says the conservatives are right about policies and goals, referring to their worldview as “true, good, and beautiful,” but says conservatism is failing to resonate in part because of key issues that candidates aren’t willing to address.

“I think we need to have honest conversations. I mean, we should as conservatives [ask questions like], ‘Why does forming a family feel inaccessible? Why are young people delaying marriage? Why does motherhood feel incompatible with professional success? Why is housing so expensive? Why do people feel economically unprepared to have children?’ Because I personally get a little frustrated with the messaging.” 

And it’s not a matter of having bad ideas. It’s merely lacking the ability to get the message across to the intended audience. “The conservative party is pushing more to have lower inflation and be able to buy a home and have accessibility. And those are all great things,” she said.

“We don’t need to abandon our principles and our policies,” Miller went on. “We do need to keep up to date with where the culture is going, where the media trends are going.” For the woman trying to figure out what to say the next time a friend brings up politics at brunch, Miller’s answer is that it’s about meeting people where they are.

“We have to be better storytellers at the end of the day,” she said.

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