Saturday, July 21, 2007

Great moments in campus conservatism


Justin Zatkoff, noted idiot and chair of the Michigan Federation of College Republicans, posed for some racy pictures at the College Republican National Convention last weekend. Scroll down to the comments for some hilarious intraparty backbiting, hand-wringing and anti-Semitism.

This raises a serious question, though: How does a person like Justin Zatkoff get elected chair of his party's statewide youth organization?

My personal experience with Justin has been limited (I wrote about him, briefly, here), but from what I gather, he's the prototypical YAF type -- loud, obnoxious and obsessed with "un-P.C." political theater.

(My impression of YAF has always been that it's a manifestation of the Ann Coulterization of the campus right -- it's interested only in offending the left and otherwise amusing its own members and sympathizers.)

I guess maybe YAF members feel entitled to act like assholes because the campus far left is similarly loony. And sometimes they do manage to provoke BAMN and the like into looking like kooks, which they probably think reflects poorly on the left.

But we already know BAMN is crazy. And unlike YAF, BAMN doesn't control its party's statewide college organization. So how is YAF helping its side, again?

Here's the bio of Steve Japinga, Zatkoff's opponent in the MFCR chair election. (Yes, he had a campaign website.) He seems like a pretty typical College Republicans sort of guy. I've met enough of them to know that, for the most part, they have very little in common with YAF.

So can someone explain to me why this guy is their leader in Michigan?

4 comments:

Jeffrey said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

They elect me because I do whatever it takes to get the job done... electing republicans, recruiting new members, and retaining the ones we have.

You'll see that at UofM this year... it's too bad people like you take some innocent fun at the CRNC convention out of context completely.

Maybe that's why the CRNC Chairman gets a pretty large paycheck each year and the CDA Chairman gets nothing. Don't be bitter because the College Republicans are better than the Dems in every way possible.

Go get off to the Michigan Daily, because anyone that reads that paper knows that writers like you, sir, are the noted idiots!

Anonymous said...

Phillip Glass anyone?

Anonymous said...

Zatkoff is a disgrace to the Republican Party