Jonathan Krohn, a star of the
conservative movement at 13 years old, has switched political sides.
Krohn's 2009 speech at the Conservative
Political Action Conference (CPAC) launched his celebrity status
among conservatives. He was hailed as a future star of the
Republican Party.
Now 17, Krohn told POLITICO.com
that he's not a conservative anymore.
“I think it was naïve,” Krohn said
of his CPAC speech. “It's a 13-year-old kid saying stuff that he
had heard for a long time. … I live in Georgia. We're inundated
with conservative talk in Georgia. … The speech was something that
a 13-year-old does. You haven't formed all your opinions. You're
really defeating yourself if you think you have all of your ideas in
your head when you were 12 or 13. It's impossible. You haven't done
enough.” (Krohn's 2009 CPAC speech is embedded in the right panel
of this page. Visit
our video library for more videos.)
The former conservative prodigy told
POLITICO.com that he now supports equal marriage rights for gay and
lesbian couples and described Obamacare as “a good idea.”
Krohn said being a social conservative
“just didn't seem right to me anymore.”
“From there, it branched into other
issues, everything from health care to economic issues,” he added.
Coincidentally, it was less than 2
weeks ago when comedian Bill
Maher criticized conservative teens, including Krohn, saying that
when a young person sounds exactly like an adult social conservative,
then “maybe you should rethink the shit that comes out of your
mouth.”