Kivus

We’ll start off this recap by examining some of the “produced” segments. The first such segment, entitled _Feature Story_ featured an interview with John Edwards. It was a pretty predictable affair as he’s getting his hair cut, has a facial mask on, cucumbers on his eyes, etc…all while talking about the concept of his “two Americas”. The other “in-studio” segment was dealt with the issue of immigration. It was a parody on the typical “immigration debate” staged on cable news shows, where they put a true expert on the topic up versus someone who just spouts populist rhetoric. The rhetoric, of course, is a big winner with the crowd and the expert hardly gets a word in. The final produced segment was a “man on the street” type segment, where the question was asked, “would you vote for a black man?” This was then taken to extreme by asking things like “would you vote for a leper?”, “would you vote for a dwarf?”…resulting in nearly everyone answering “yes” to all questions, except “would you vote for a woman?” which would got some mixed results.

The interlude segments this week were fairly strong. The _Hollywood Helping Humanity_ featured Ryan Ziering asking for people to “donate their unused Carbs” while the ACLU commercial explained how they sued to back up the University of North Carolina in the university’s effort to make all their students study the Koran. The “Guy White, Closet Conservative” cartoon wasn’t the best one I’ve seen, dealing with Guy deciding to announce to the company he was a conservative, but ultimately backing down.

Dennis Miller’s _The Buck Stops Here_ lacked a cohesive theme this week, instead going for a bunch of quick hitters. He discussed Hillary’s War Vote and her confusing spin of it, how liberals say “but” while moderates say “however”, and how the killing of the terrorists before they kill us can be though of as “pre-emptive universal health care”. Overall, it wasn’t close to his stinging cristism of Harry Reid and was more in line with his earlier efforts that were on the weaker side.

The news segments on the Half Hour News Hour have been strong through my last few viewings and this week was no exception. It seems like both of the co-hosts are really getting their timing down and Jennifer Robertson (who goes by “Jennifer Lang” on the show) has really taken her performance up a notch from when the show started. Some joke highlights include: Rosie moving up the terrorist priority list due to the al-Qaeda in Iraq’s leader being captured, Gore’s Daughter’s wedding having more people at it than his _Live Earth_, Rudy writing his “Prenup with America”, a Democratic debate focusing on Gay issues will be done as a musical, and the coup de grace: Democrats plan to show how serious they are about the war on terror, by promising to have more sleepovers.

Yes, it’s true. Existing in the wild today are conservatives who are in their twenties. Of course, when we go out, we normally have film crews following us: “Watch them enter those buildings. They come here every Sunday. We think they’re called churches” the narrator says. “Then after attending these ‘churches’, they go home, and watch cars drive quite quickly in a circle. It’s a growing sport, known as ‘NASCAR.’ We have yet to fully understand the rules, but we think it has something to do with the different colored flags they wave from time to time.” As far as the media and our peers are concerned, we might as well be some rare species.

So why is that people do not identify themselves as conservatives as these younger ages? The reasons lie both with external forces and with conservatives themselves. The external forces are numerous: public school systems are full of liberal teachers, pushing their views on their students; university campuses are full fledged indoctrination centers, and the drive-by media trumpets liberal ideas on nearly all topics everyday. Combining these factors together it’s easy to see why young “skulls full of mush” might be swayed into believing liberal ideals. Then, as more young people start saying they’re liberal, those that are afraid to be “left out” of the group, also say they’re liberal. Some younger girls make it known that they will not date (or beyond) a conservative male, while college-age males might prefer a girl who doesn’t follow a morality instilled by a solid conservative upbringing. In the end, a wave of factors come crashing down on young people, trying to get them to lean to the left.

Though blame for a lack of conservative young people can be placed on external factors, conservatives have to take some of the blames themselves. One of the major problems in getting young people to explain conservative ideals is explaining what conservatism is, especially when compared with how liberalism is defined. Take an issue like health care, where a liberal might say “Everyone should have their health care needs provided for”and a conservative might say “We should let the market help in lowering health care costs.” Clearly, someone who is not versed in economic principles and free-market concepts is going to be drawn to the liberals answer. Why? Because it just “seems nice”. In addition to the lack of message coming from conservatives, you have people like Jon Stewart (who more twenty-somethings get their news from than probably any other newscaster) making this poor conveying of principles sound even more ridiculous.

So how can this trend be reversed? The easiest way would be if a charismatic conservative, with excellent oratory skills, was to emerge on the national stage. The question then becomes: Is there such a person out there? The conventional wisdom is that the next big “star’ of the Republican party is Eric Cantor, but as Bob Novak said recently, “he’s a makes the trains run on time” type of guy. That’s not what the Republican party and the Conservative movement need right now, and finding what they do need, might be a long time in the making.