Fearful that their growing stable of aging neocons and their senior moments might not be quite hep enough for the kids, the Washington Post turns over the op-ed page to  young conservative leading light SE Cupp, fresh off the raging success of the Twitterball:

Since all of the big names bagged on CPAC and rendered it a potential loserfest, the Post offered up a free page of advertising so the trenchant Ms. Cupp could amp up the sexy:

See, in my world, stars don’t come any bigger than Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, Mitt Romney and Mike Pence (if there were a congressional version of Teen Beat, the Indiana congressman would be on its cover every month). Michael Steele, Mike Huckabee and John Boehner are the Jonas Brothers of conservative celebrity.

I think they have hormone therapy for that.

Anyway, not all young conservatives seem to think that the star power of wingnut back benchers and C list media figures is enough to make the conference relevant.  Soren Dayton tweets a link ("twinks"?) to this post by Rick Moran at The Next Right (who seem to be carving out a niche for themselves as party buzzkills):

The theme of this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) should be “Cocooning our way to Irrelevancy” or perhaps “How to lose the next 5 elections in 10 easy steps.”

From my point of view, it really is that bad. With the exception of some effort to bring conservatism into the 21st century communications-wise, the program appears to be an excellent panacea for what ailed conservatism in about 1980. It’s as if the debacles of 2006 and 2008 never happened. Does it matter that the very same people who helped get us clobbered the last two election cycles are running seminars and roundtables at the conference? Not if you’re a movement still in denial that it will take more than “message tweaking” and better utilization of the internet to bring conservatism back and make it relevant to a large portion of Americans again.

The side conference being sponsored by PJTV – “Conservatism 2.0” – looks interesting but here again, we have familiar faces who haven’t expressed much interest in real conservative reform. (Some panelists on the communications side are the exception.) Glenn Reynolds and Michelle Malkin are internet friends of mine and I agree with them on many issues. But are they really the people to be running a “Conservatism 2.0” conference? Perhaps I misunderstand what they are trying to accomplish. And I may be pleasantly surprised. But before we can even get to “Conservatism 2.0” perhaps we should be thinking of taking a remedial course in what conservatism should mean in our modern society. I’m afraid this sort of introspection will reveal how far afield conservatism has strayed but may also generate thoughts and ideas about how conservatism can be relevant in a 21st century industrialized democracy.

I guess Mike Pence as Hugh Jackman for the thinking conservative or PJTV as "a conservative answer to The View" doesn’t get it done for everyone.  There’s still the small problem that the country thinks your party dragged it into a ditch and mugged it for the past 8 years to deal with.

Rick to his credit looks the problem square in the eye:

Also a session I plan on attending will be “Building the Conservative Hispanic Coalition.” I will almost guarantee that it will be the least popular session as far as attendance at the conference. Given the way GOP candidates shamefully and inexplicably dissed Hispanics by refusing to show up for the Spanish TV debate, I would be ashamed to show my face at this session too.

Maybe the message just needs a change of venue.  How about "snapping bongloads with Pete Wilson."