Young Republican Grifters Own Libs, Destroy Conservative Movement

Young Republican Grifters Own Libs, Destroy Conservative Movement

Charlie Kirk, Candace Owens, and the conservative youth group worshiping at the altar of Trump

Kimberly Ross

Kimberly Ross

Aug 14, 2019 · 10 min read

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Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens | Source: MediaNews Group/Boulder Daily Camera (Getty)

American conservatism is in disarray.

Yes, the Republican Party has the presidency, the U.S. Senate, a favorable Supreme Court lineup, more governorships and state legislatures than the opposing party—basically, they’ve got everything but the U.S. House.

What they don’t have is a youth movement that understands what conservatism is really about.

A political ideology centered around small government, free markets, personal responsibility, and adherence to the Constitution has been hijacked by a populist phenomenon that looks nothing like the doctrine it claims to hold dear.

At the heart of the new regime are personalities whose characteristics make them perfect sycophants for Trump. They are incurious—zealously so—just like their leader. But it’s not enough, in the arena of politics, to be a lukewarm supporter—to be a public figure who says, “Well, Trump’s less bad than the alternative, so we’ll back him for now.” No, the ones who want prominence, status, and maybe, just maybe if they’re lucky, a presidential retweet, must show unrelenting enthusiasm; they must go all-in. They know that if they play their cards right, if they show unbridled energy in the service of defending the president publicly, it can propel them toward Trump’s orbit.

This, by the way, is exactly what Trump needed to ensure that his 2016 victory was a takeover rather than an aberration. He needed grifters; he needed the unflinching loyalty of those committed to “owning the libs” above all else; he needed a movement of young Republicans whose devotion to conservative principles was always paper thin. Without these grifters, Trump would have been a blip. With them, it’s unclear whether conservatism can detoxify itself.

This is why, despite all the levers of power Republicans currently wield, conservatism is actually in ruins. And it is Trump’s young grifters who are helping him ruin it.

Was there always this hidden undercurrent ready to spring up and spill over into the mainstream in response to Democrats moving further left? For those of us who cling to a pre-2016 conservatism and reject the current brand espoused by the president and his uncritical mass of supporters, the question is deeply uncomfortable. Still, it must be asked.

Trump’s Rise

Trump’s ascent to the White House is one of those things that appears impossible before it happens, yet after it does you wonder why you ever expected anything different. Look at the inputs. George W. Bush, the “compassionate conservative,” was judged too friendly to liberal interests. John McCain, the 2008 Republican candidate, was to many conservatives even worse on this front. McCain’s loss to Barack Obama ushered in a period of intense Republican anger. In response to Obama’s eight years in office, they were never going to go with a mild and moderate replacement—they wanted his antithesis.

The 2010 Tea Party wave wasn’t, after all, a gentle rebuke. There were other under-the-radar episodes that predicted Trump, such as when Marco Rubio attempted a compromise on immigration reform and his career was nearly ruined as a result. Input after input showed that Republicans wanted something wild and new, a political force they believed could counter what they perceived to be the Democrats’ lurch to the left.

In 2016, a weary GOP backed a scorched earth approach. Almost overnight, a bumbling, boorish, reality star billionaire took the reins and stormed his way to victory. Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Marco Rubio—these candidates were quickly left in the dust, mouths agape, wondering how the anti-politician became the darling of the right.

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He did so by being, in the words of his supporters, a “fighter.” Jeb Bush, who once politely requested his audience to clap for him, did not seem capable of pushing back against the leftist tide threatening to remake American society. As the Republican primaries gave way to the general election, as the tone of Trump’s campaign grew coarser by the hour, the more Trump’s base resonated with it. Savagery sells, especially when it’s used as a retroactive salve to lessen the wounds of the past. The GOP couldn’t make Obama’s legacy disappear, but with each Trump-endorsed insult Obama’s two-term presidency seemed less important, less significant. And to Republican voters, that felt good.

Prior to his victory, there was a lot of talk about voters holding their nose as they cast their vote for Trump. A lot of talk about Trump being “the lesser evil.” You don’t see this reasoning so much anymore. Trump has consolidated support and turned lukewarm supporters into enthusiasts.

A major way he did so wasn’t via Paul Ryan’s acquiescense to Trump—as if the voters who sent Trump to the Oval cared a whit about Ryan. He consolidated support mainly by drawing to himself a network of grifters whose collected energies could set up a pro-Trump machine that would overwhelm the airwaves, the TV networks, the social media spaces, the college campus halls, with a single, unifying message: above all else, we must own the libs.

Like any cult, the Trump cult requires passionate missionaries to disseminate its message. Older, established advocates—Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Fox News guests, radio hosts and their ilk—are necessary to bring their considerable listeners into the fold, but you don’t go from cult to movement without the youth on your side, without a youth group.

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The Young MAGA-Grifters

One of the most well-known MAGA soldiers is 25-year-old Charlie Kirk, founder and executive director of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), a student organization supposedly dedicated to free speech, free markets, and small government. These sound great on paper and in soundbites, but the reality of what they do doesn’t line up with their stated aspirations.

Kirk’s target demographic is impressionable high school and undergraduate students who are alienated within left-dominated academe and yearn for a place to belong. There is nothing wrong with such yearning. The problem is that this horde of conservakids is fronted by Kirk and Candace Owens, the former communications director for TPUSA, both of whom do a major disservice to the true conservative cause.

In his review of Kirk’s latest book, Campus Battlefield: How Conservatives Can WIN the Battle on Campus and Why It Matters, The Washington Examiner’s Grant Addison minces no words (emphasis mine).

Leveraging his youth, talent for public speaking, and access to the White House, he’s fooled conservative donors into thinking he’s helping the cause of freedom on campus. Likewise, he’s fooled restless high school students and undergraduates into thinking performative victimhood and petty partisanship are epistemologically satisfying. Neither is true. Whether due to ignorance or indifference, Kirk and, by extension, his organization are hypocrites, and childish ones at that. And this petulant hypocrisy undermines not just legitimate indictments of higher education, but the intellectual development of young conservatives. The great irony of Campus Battlefield is how thoroughly Kirk paints this picture in his own words.

It’s evident that Kirk envisions himself as some grand general, leading his troops into the culture war. In reality, Kirk is a band director: his thoughts unoriginal and motions rehearsed, he trains his ensemble to play along to the tune of the day — currently, that of “owning the libs.” After all, the band’s job is to help cheer the team on to victory — a role Kirk performs with relish. And so he goes from campus to campus, conservatism’s fresh-faced Harold Hill, peddling his siren’s song to the kids in town until something better comes along.

Lacking any substance to stand on, Kirk and his team are focused on winning at all costs. All the while, they are either ignorant of or dismiss the idea that winning and winning well are two entirely different things. Donald J. Trump was certainly victorious on November 8, 2016, but to what end?

Owens, meanwhile, has also followed the MAGA grifting train to prominence.

In her Quillette article “The Problem With Candace Owens,” Arc editor Cathy Young explains why we should question the influence of someone who once stood firmly on the other side of the political aisle and only experienced a “conservative awakening” once the conditions were firmly in place to lucratively profit from shifting ideological gears.

Owens’s self-reinvention has certainly left quite a few people unconvinced. “Mundane Matt,” the libertarian video blogger who was among the first to denounce the Social Autopsy project, has slammed the new Owens as a cynical “performer” who doesn’t believe a word of what she says and who “plays victim” just as much as the leftists she decries. Software engineer Marlene Jaeckel, a self-described moderate conservative who recently went public about being ostracized by the “women in tech” community for challenging feminist narratives of victimhood, also had an extremely negative impression of Owens when she met her at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February: “She’s as fake as a three-dollar bill,” Jaeckel told me in a Twitter direct message, recalling that Owens seemed far more interested in “taking selfies with more famous speakers” than in discussion of issues.

Whether Candace Owens has any ideas at all besides the advancement of Candace Owens is very much in question.

In April here at Arc, Young wrote of Owens’ ceaseless attitude of victimhood, her rank tribalism, and how toxic she is for black Americans and conservatism, alike.

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To Kirk and Owens, personal advancement and name recognition matter more than educating youth on the history and merits of conservatism. The TPUSA message is so flimsy and Trump-focused that it can be distilled into an imprint on a t-shirt without losing much force. Some might call that powerful. Other young people recognize just how pernicious it truly is.

Of course, Kirk and Owens are far from the only youthful MAGA grifters.

CJ Pearson is only 17 years old, but has already been on the political scene for a while. On the right (and the left!) youth is rewarded for little more than existing. As long as a teenager spouts what established adults believe, they are quickly propelled to a larger platform. Often, that premature promotion becomes a problem.

Pearson rose to fame in 2015 when, at the age of 12 (!), he began lambasting President Obama and the Democrats from his YouTube channel. A very young, black conservative denouncing a black, leftist president naturally drew major attention. Once the 2016 presidential campaign season began in earnest in June of 2015, Pearson was all-in for Senator Rand Paul…until he wasn’t. In September, he threw his full support behind Senator Ted Cruz and explained his desire to reach millennials: “We’re seeking to learn from the mistakes of Romney, learn from the mistakes of McCain and to seek to tap into a new generation of courageous conservatives… the millennial generation.” By December, Pearson had switched direction entirely and vocalized his support for none other than Senator Bernie Sanders. “People are struggling in America,” claimed Pearson. “We need the right man in the White House. And in my opinion, that man is Senator Bernie Sanders.”

A Paul to Cruz to Sanders evolution is quite a story. But it didn’t end there.

Not long after endorsing Sanders, Pearson wrote a brief article entitled, “I’m 13 and Donald Trump Becoming President Scares the Crap Out of Me.”

I’m scared not only for myself, but also for my generation and the future of our great nation. But honestly, his ascension begs the question: Do people not know how bad Donald Trump is or do they just not care? I hope it’s the former because you can help ignorance, but you can’t fix stupid.

In August 2016, Pearson made another shocking announcement when he officially endorsed Donald Trump for president.

In my young optimistic eyes, after the last eight years of the Obama presidency, there is little left to lose. There is only room to do better, and there is only one goal: to make America great for every American.

Currently, Pearson maintains his support for Trump and has regained some of the GOP support he lost from flip-flopping all over the national stage. It’s hardly surprising that both sides love him when he is their own. Adults are easily caught up by the appeal of a young person amplifying their beliefs.

The whole thing has been a strange, tilted, less consistent version of the Jonathan Krohn saga. Pearson is quite obviously focused on building his own brand, not on building a conservative intellectual foundation. The only constant in Pearson’s ideological universe is himself. You don’t switch from one political extreme to another and back again absent narcissism or the ravages of teenage fickleness. It’s exhausting, juvenile, and foolish.

Let me be clear: there is nothing wrong with the ideas behind conservatism, or with robust youth activism. There is everything wrong with a lack of intellectual groundwork, training young Republicans to believe that “owning the libs” is the chief political good, that principles take a back seat to popularity, and that Trumpism and all it entails is morally sound by virtue of its victories.

The youth vote is great, but it means little unless it is built upon a solid foundation that rejects clichés, continuously strives for improvement, and ensures a similar political trajectory in the future.

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With “role models” like Kirk, Owens, Pearson, and others at the helm, the hope that true conservatism will make a healthy, post-Trump comeback is anything but certain.

Kimberly Ross is a columnist at Arc Digital. Follow her on Twitter @SouthernKeeks.