Last week news broke that Jonathan Krohn gave up conservatism at the ripe old age of 17. If you don’t know Krohn, he took the political world by storm in 2008, when at the age of 13 he addressed the CPAC conference talking about conservatism. The right jumped all over him and made him their new poster child. Even countless big name conservatives decided to treat him as a star, posing in countless pictures with the 13 year old boy. TPM actually has assembled a slide show of Krohn posing with Romney, Gingrich, Breitbart, O’Reilly and countless others.
But when Krohn denounced conservatism last week the tides turned. Once their “child star”, the right has now turned into a bunch of rabid dogs, attacking yet another child. Today Krohn has written about it in Salon. In it he hits at the big problem coming from today’s right:
But then, earlier this week, Politico released an interview in which I announced I wasn’t a conservative anymore — and the proverbial crap hit the fan. Since then, I have been treated by the political right with all the maturity of schoolyard bullies. The Daily Caller, for instance, wrote three articles about my shift, topping it off with an opinion piece in which they stated that I deserved criticism because I wear “thick-rimmed glasses” and I like Ludwig Wittgenstein. Why don’t they just call me “four-eyes”? These are not adults leveling serious criticism; these are scorned right-wingers showing all the maturity of a little boy. No wonder I fit in so well when I was 13.
(emphasis added)
Welcome to the maturity of today’s Republicans. They don’t care your reason; if you have the nerve to disagree with them they will attack you personally.
Remember who we are talking about here, a 17 year old who was 13 when he supported conservatism. This was a person who hadn’t paid taxes or bills, dealt with healthcare or had to make any real life altering decisions. He hadn’t experienced the parts of life yet that makes you decide your political alignment. That didn’t matter to the right, though. Instead they took to him like vultures and decided that a 13 year old was a great person to hold up. And who is to say that he won’t get out there on his own and decide that conservatism is really the way to go? But the attacks the right has lobed against him won’t make him come back to the fray, but rather keep him further away.
And this really hits on something I have been bringing up time and time again – the right needs an adult leader. Instead the face of the GOP becomes Sarah Palin or Rush Limbaugh, two people who do nothing but launch childish attacks. They do it and the right cheers them on. That’s why people like Richard Posner has decided to speak out against the crazies of the GOP. Of course that lead to him getting attacked too.