Dropping Dimes With Edmund Burke

The Republican Hip-Hop project is proceeding as planned.

Chris Good:

Young Conservatives rap about being a young and conservative in the Obama era: “I debate any poser who don’t shoot straight/government spending needs to deflate” … “We need more women with intellectual integrity/I’m talkin, Megyn Kelly not Nancy Pelosi” … “Superman that socialism, waterboard that terrorism”

Scott Johnson at Powerline

Allah Pundit:

It’s making the rounds on Twitter and destined for viral status so you might as well watch it now. I want to call shenanigans and say this is a false-flag operation, but how often do you see a political parody play it absolutely straight? If this were a goof, surely there’d be some sign — an obviously jokey line, a bit of comic overacting, something.

Adam Sewer at Tapped

This whole conservative rap thing is nothing new under the sun. We believe the focal point, the nexus, may be Eli Lake. Or Reihan Salam.

Reihan Salam and Eli Lake on Bloggingheads on rap and twap.

Reihan’s twitter feed. Eli Lake’s twitter feed.

Some of their twaps:

Eli Lake:

@reihansalam Condi aint a neocon/soft like scowcroft/underboss rick-ross style realist/anti-idealist/freedom lovin neos never feelin it/

Tbogg had something to say about that.

More Lake here:

Haters quote me/anti-okey-dokey/aint no joke/ E’s just to low-key/ i order code reds like I’m jessup/stress up a source to fess-up of course

Here

my shaolin is DPRK/karate juche/no se/anyway/ I’m Kim jong illin 2 blackbelt status/rhyme apparatus/pyonyang’s general mattis

Here

plugged in like a socket/check the court docket/wanted: unbelieva/Bagdadis call the e mr. man shia/cause i love ali but i don’t love sharia

Some recent Reihan rhymes:

Here:

Ascending lofty heights/Steve Kroft in striped tights/Lesley Stahl’s appalled/ + Andy Rooney drawls so off-the-wall/”I hate some s*” y’all

Here

Twitter it/David Vitter is not illiterate/so why not read the statute bout knocking boots with prostitutes/I’d rather be a cheater like Newt

Here

Ran into Dick Armitage/he was mangled my a marmoset/the pharmacist said, “I’m out of leeches/let’s cross-dress and listen to Peaches”/yes

Here

Pakistan Zindabad/Ichabod Crane insane/headless on horseback/welcome you back like Horshack/my keyboard setting: Dvorak/Dorothy Zbornak

Back at CPAC, there was  a conservative rapper called Hi-Caliber that got some attention.

Spencer Ackerman and Eli Lake on Bloggingheads on conservative rapper Hi-Caliber.

Max Blumenthal in Daily Beast on Hi-Caliber.

Spencer Ackerman:

“Yeah I’m a PC, I’m a positive conservative/ A hip-hop emcee and a life-long Jersey kid/ Got my degree from the streets just like Curtis did.” Yo, your style is suicidal because you just self-murdered it. So this is what would have happened if 50 Cent came from New Jersey? Mountain Lakes, stand up for your boy!

And for bonus points:

Attackerman and Vitamin’s (Spencer Ackerman and Eli Lake) Blago rap:

For even more bonus points, Jeff Chang and Eli Lake on whether rappers are natural Republicans.

UPDATE: Dday on the Young Conservatives

UPDATE #2: Dave Kasten at Attackerman on the Young Conservatives:

Look, maybe their passions will moderate, but what scares me far more is that this is where people who used to believe that “Ideas have consequences”  now see no deep rhetorical contradiction in traditional values being defending by Soulja Boy’s favorite move. It’s not the contradiction, it’s the lack of irony  that freaks me out.

UPDATE #3: Sadly No on the Young Conservatives

UPDATE #4: John Schwenkler on the Young Conservatives

George Hawley

The conservative movement knows that it has a problem with young voters. Specifically, they have no young voters. The Young Cons, or any similar group, will not help. Hip-hop will never be a good medium for promoting supply-side economics – or any other Republican buzzword these tools will ever want to advance. BET and the GOP are not natural allies. A disingenuous rap song explaining that Martin Luther King was “really a conservative” (which is simply not true, by the way) will not change that essential fact.

You occasionally hear that the conservative movement needs to “engage in some culture,” and finally abandon the myopic strategy of focusing exclusively on the electoral health of the Republican Party. I simultaneously agree and have no idea what that means.

The trouble with efforts to advance “conservative art” is that artists are a self-selecting group. I am not sure what can be done to change the fact that most musicians and screen writers tend to lean toward the statist left. However, if someone decides to be an artist of any sort simply because he is a conservative and he thinks more conservatives should be artists, it’s a good bet that he will churn out crap.

Daniel McCarthy

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