Monday, March 09, 2009

It's So Simple To Be Afraid

Matt Yglesias on the right's new star 14-year old Jonathan Krohn:
What does it accomplish to put a 14 year-old front and center at CPAC? What’s the message it’s supposed to send? That the conservative message is childish? That the right’s talking points can be easily mastered by a 14 year-old? That the CPAC audience doesn’t care about the knowledge-base of the speakers there, they just want to hear certain ritual beats repeated? I wouldn’t want to claim that liberals are so high-minded as to be above all that, but I’m hard-pressed to think of an example of liberals trying to flaunt disdain for knowledge and expertise.

It'd be one thing if Mr. Krohn was some sort of intellectual prodigy coming up with new, deep, and intricate philosophical or policy arguments that weren't being articulated before. But as best I can see, Krohn has simply gotten a jump at mastering the art of conservative bomb-throwing as well as any talk radio host. A skill, and in some ways a very impressive one (particularly in terms of the political knowledge it entails), but nothing worthy of the gold plated treatment he's been getting. Unless, of course, the GOP has been reduced to talk show bomb-throwing, which isn't out of the question.

2 comments:

PG said...

Krohn seems to be very into the Founding Fathers, so it's not as though he's spouting conservative talking points with no conception of what conservatism as a philosophy means. But Yglesias misses the point: conservatives aren't looking for a new paradigm. If they went looking for new paradigms, they wouldn't be conservatives. Duh. And quite frankly, given the iterations of conservatism that we've had in America in the last 50 years or so, I'm cool with going old school and stick to Burkean conservatism.

Anonymous said...

First a man-child runs the country for 8 years and now they turn to a child-child.

For more on the Doogie Howser RNC check out my article at:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/warren-holstein/gop-mini-me-no-pubes-no-p_b_173298.html