WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Republican cheerleaders have found a new narrative for the 2016 campaign after the emergence of Marco Rubio as a leading contender in the presidential race and the election of Paul Ryan as the youngest speaker of the House since 1869.

The Florida senator seeking the Republican nomination is just 44 and the Wisconsin congressman taking the speaker’s gavel is 45. For many viewers, another star in last week’s Republican debate was Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, also 44.

So the new narrative is that Republicans are the party of youth and the future. Far from being in disarray, the Grand Old Party is completing a transition to a new generation.

Democrats, according to the subplot in this narrative, are geriatric, with all their leaders well over 65 — from presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton and her main challenger, Bernie Sanders, to House leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate leader Harry Reid.

Conservative commentator Bill Kristol summed it up in a couple of tweets. “The party of Boehner and Bush is now the party of Ryan & Rubio,” he tweeted last week.

In another tweet, he wanted to crowdsource a name for the elderly Democratic leadership, starting with his suggestion of “Medicare Democrats.”

Kristol is probably best known for identifying Sarah Palin in 2007 as the future of the Republican Party, but that doesn’t stop the editor of the Weekly Standard — who is 62 and will be eligible for Medicare himself a year after the new president takes office — from trying to shape opinion again.

Rubio has made the transition to a new generation a theme of his campaign, and has contrasted himself not only to the 68-year-old Clinton but the 62-year-old Jeb Bush.

“Just yesterday, we heard from a leader from yesterday who wants to take us back to yesterday,” Rubio said in April, announcing his candidacy the day after Clinton announced hers. “But our country has always been about the future.”

Other conservative commentators have been quick to take up the call.

“Just when you thought the Republican Party was destined to take a turn toward the ugly, two boyishly handsome young stars have emerged,” Matt Lewis, a contributor to the conservative Daily Caller, proclaimed in an op-ed for the British daily The Telegraph.

In recent months, even liberal commentators have bemoaned the aging of the Democrats, the weakness of the party’s bench, the lack of a youthful opponent to Clinton.

It’s a nice, simple narrative — young, future-oriented Republicans ready to take over from aging, backward-looking Democrats. Unfortunately, it leaves a lot out of the story.

Rubio and Ryan may indeed be “boyishly handsome,” but they are also Tea Party favorites who espouse extremely conservative views that are out of step with the majority of voters of all ages.

Rubio famously declines to give an opinion not only about climate change but about the age of the planet, for fear of alienating the evangelical voters who take the Bible literally and believe all of creation is only 6,000 years old. “I’m not a scientist, man,” Rubio told GQ magazine in 2012 when asked how old the Earth is. “It’s one of the great mysteries.”

Ultimately, voters will base their choice on the issues, however much youth or charisma can increase a candidate’s appeal.

Whether on climate change, immigration reform, gutting Medicare and Social Security, repealing Obamacare, or relations with Cuba — Rubio, Ryan and the whole new generation of Republican politicians are on the wrong side of the majority in this country.

It is, after all, the oldest candidate in the field, the 74-year-old Bernie Sanders, who is drawing thousands of young people to his rallies because they are concerned about the impact of these issues on their future.

Clinton can offer voters the chance to elect the first woman to the White House, which is at least as appealing to broad swaths of the population as electing the first Latino — especially since many Latinos will be voting for Clinton on the issues.

She will pick a running mate like Housing Secretary Julian Castro, the former mayor of San Antonio, to neutralize the youth and ethnic heritage allure of Rubio or Cruz.

And don’t worry too much about the depth of the Democratic bench, in Congress or elsewhere. There is a strong group of young, vigorous and diverse politicians working their way up the ladder — from Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker, Martin Heinrich, and Michael Bennet in the Senate, to Keith Ellison, Tulsi Gabbard, Tammy Duckworth, Joaquin Castro (Julian’s twin brother) and a host of others in the House.

For the moment, in any case, it is their own “geriatric” hopefuls, the 69-year-old Donald Trump and the 64-year-old Ben Carson, who are leading the Republican field, so it may be premature to spin a narrative of generational change.