Gov. Ron DeSantis said this week that Republicans should stop worrying about young voters abandoning the party in droves — and insisted that what young people really want is not government intervention for affordable housing or cheaper college, but limited government.

Speaking Thursday to the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based free-market think tank founded in 1984 that has long advocated limited government and skepticism of climate policy, DeSantis acknowledged what he called "serious debates" about how support among young people for the Republican Party has bottomed out since 2024, according to Florida Politics reporter A.G. Gancarski. The remarks come amid broader Republican soul-searching after the party's 2024 coalition, which had made gains with younger men in particular, showed signs of fraying in subsequent special elections and polling. While conceding that young people are voicing complaints about "a lot of problems, particularly economically, for young people," such as rising college tuition and debt, DeSantis argued those burdens were byproducts of government intervention in the free market.

"Whose problem was that? Who created that problem? Did Free Enterprise create that problem? No, government created that problem," insisted DeSantis. "You want to look at the cost of groceries? You want to look at the cost of living that has gone up since COVID? Was that because of Free Enterprise? No."

"It was because of the COVID spending, the Biden stimulus, the Federal Reserve," said DeSantis, referring to the disease that the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic back in 2020. "Government created the inflation. Government created the interest rates. Government has made it more difficult for young people to get by. So the idea that the answer is going to be more government, but in a conservative direction, that's a fool's errand."

Notably absent from DeSantis' list of culprits was inflation attributed to President Donald Trump's ongoing trade war with U.S. economic partners and the country's nearest neighbors. Nor did he cite the unilateral war Trump declared against Iran in February, despite no direct attack on the U.S. from that country.

Polling, however, runs counter to the Florida governor's framing. Surveys show young voters largely hold Trump and Republicans responsible for high inflation eroding their entry-level wages and the cost of filling up their cars for the workweek. Young voters also appear poised to punish the party in power over the high cost of college, elevated home prices, and steep mortgage costs that make homeownership difficult for people under 30 — a generational affordability squeeze that has become a defining feature of U.S. politics as mortgage rates remain well above their pre-pandemic levels.

DeSantis, for his part, said Republicans should not even attempt to compete with Democrats' advocacy for a robust social safety net and lower costs.

"There is no way (Republicans are) ever going to be able to outdo a Mamdani in promising government benefits to people. It's a fool's errand to do that game," said DeSantis, in a reference to Zohran Mamdani, the New York state assemblyman and Democratic socialist whose campaign focused on affordability issues such as freezing rents and free buses. His remarks underscore a widening intraparty argument about whether the GOP's path back with younger voters runs through economic populism or a renewed emphasis on free-market principle. He called on Republicans to remain "true to the principles that have made this country great."

"You can't just recycle policies from 40 or 50 years. You've got to adapt. You've got to understand what's going on, but please do not fall for this," he urged, adding that Democratic socialists "are promising the moon and will fail to deliver."