“If you’re conservative when you’re young, you’re heartless. If you’re liberal when you’re old, you’re brainless.”So goes the old adage, reflecting conventional wisdom on age and politics.But, in the wake of the Conservative Political Action Conference — a conservative organizational rally held last week — it seems some percentage of young Americans are either heartless or proving that saying wrong.CPAC garnered a flurry of media attention, and there are already volumes of opinion and analysis written about its significance.One of the foremost observations reporters and commentators are making about the conference is the unprecedented showing by younger attendees. By some reports, the audience was at times about half college-age young adults.The organizers tried to put the “party” in the GOP, as a way of courting these attendees and putting up the appearance of youthful vigor. Their attempts range from standard college party techniques (bars, underage drinking and the wildly popular drink “Redheaded Sluts”) to the bizarre (guests could attend a “Smoke Out Terrorism” event involving hookahs and cherry tobacco) to the downright laughable — an event on the XPAC schedule (Xtreme Politically Active Conservatives, the Stephen Baldwin-founded youth arm of CPAC) read, “11 p.m. XPAC Rap/Jam Session, live music and special performances by Rappers: Hi-Caliber, Young Cons and many more!”
It really gave the Republican Party some hope of changing its traditional image of old, stodgy, well-off white men — to stodgy well-off white men of all ages. I think Jon Stewart’s writing team would have a hard time coming up with a satire that hilariously cliched and, well, lame.
In all seriousness, the youth presence at CPAC is disturbing — but only because CPAC itself is disturbing. The event is a riotous and self-congratulatory anger festival showcasing the many faults of the most militant, reactionary and dangerous wings of the Republican Party and the conservative movement.The prime speakers at the event included Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter — a veritable laundry list of exactly who should not be in charge of steering a movement, let alone a political party.The convention’s overarching theme was nominally “reducing government spending.” The form that theme took, not surprisingly, was a no-holds-barred, riotous echo chamber of self-congratulatory bragging and inflammatory rhetoric against the Democratic establishment.But, while this is business as usual for the far-right folks who follow Beck and Limbaugh’s word as law, what’s truly saddening is how well younger attendees took to it. “This is like our Woodstock,” said Jason Mattera, a spokesman for the Young America’s Foundation. “Except that our women are beautiful, we speak in complete sentences and our notion of freedom doesn’t consist of snorting cocaine, which is certainly one thing that separates us from Barack Obama.”Just the kind of mature, civil discourse our country needs right now, don’t you think?The highest-profile young Republicans there were the film crew of James O’Keefe, the rabidly ideological filmmaker whose most famous work was exposing the ACORN prostitute scandal.Oh wait, did we mention he got caught brazenly and illegally tampering with the phones in Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office?Instead of being shunned, this thug — who may well be a felon before the year is out — was given a hero’s welcome at the party, including an open bar tab, VIP spots and all the cigars he could smoke.Let me be perfectly clear — I have no problem with young conservatives, or really conservatives of any kind. If CPAC had been a rational forum where solutions to the real problems our nation faces could be calmly and thoroughly discussed, a strong youth presence would have been something to be cheered.But CPAC was not any of that. Instead, it was a forum for gut-reactionary ideologues to spew immature hate, re-propose stale, meaningless ideals and go about the business of being conservative in the loudest, ugliest and most juvenile way possible.If you’re a conservative when you’re young, you aren’t heartless. But if you’re a conservative in the same way most of CPAC was, you’re probably brainless — and should probably stick to the “Redheaded Sluts” and leave politics to the grown-ups.Matthew Albright is a 21-year old mass communication junior from Baton Rouge. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_malbright.—-Contact Matthew Albright at [email protected]