Silicon Valley's Ro Khanna scares—and impresses—national conservatives
The congressman from the 17th CA district (which includes much of Silicon Valley) displays a civil, inclusive approach, which has conservative pundits worried—and taking notice. Kurt Schlichter from Townhall reports.
Representative Ro Khanna from California, specifically Silicon Valley.
Perhaps you haven’t heard of him yet, but if he has his way, you will. The guy is intensely ambitious. He’s a Yale lawyer from back before Yale Law School became a communist joke. He is wired into the tech world (a bunch of big tech companies are in his district). He can also speak in coherent sentences. He tells a powerful story as the son of legal immigrants. He’s got the résumé, but he’s also got the drive. He ran and ran and ran until he finally won an election to Congress against a long-term congressman. And he won’t admit it outright, but he’s got his eyes set on the White House.
I became familiar with him by listening to the Hugh Hewitt Show here on Salem, and when I recently guest-hosted for Hugh, I asked our booker to reach out and see if he would come on. I didn’t expect he would. After all, I am me. But he did. And he was really, really good. It pains me to admit it, but the guy has talent. And we should be, if not worried, concerned.
His politics are straight-up California Democrat. He’s pro-abortion, pro-trans, and very left-wing about economics despite the total failure of left-wing economics. He was Big Mad over bombing Iran. If all you were talking about were his preferred policies, he’d be interchangeable with any number of progressive CongressBots. But you know what distinguishes him?
He doesn’t seem to hate us.
Go Deeper:
We conservatives are the ultimate political cheap dates. You could be the pinkest of pinkos, and if you don’t treat us like members of the Third Reich, we’re going to at least politely hear you out. But if you have contempt for us, you’re going to make us mad, and when we get mad, we campaign hard.
But this guy doesn’t give that vibe, and he makes it hard to dislike him. Ro Khanna came on an unashamedly right-wing show with an unashamedly bomb-throwing right-wing guest host without a hint of fear or malice, explaining that he believes he should be challenged by our ideas. Whoa.
Khanna does not give you the impression that he believes that, because of your conservatism, you should be disenfranchised, enslaved, or murdered. He doesn’t go in for the MSNBC blood libel stuff. Instead, he’s open and sincere, and he sounds reasonable, though I need to emphasize that on policy, it’s all commie nonsense.
And he does something else that I appreciate as a citizen, as an interviewer, and especially as a lawyer. He actually answers the questions you ask him. I asked him about what policies would make a conservative like me consider him. He emphasized that he is a big defender of free speech and an opponent of cancel culture. We’ll have to see how far that goes, but he doesn’t immediately label anyone who disagrees with him as a purveyor of disinformation. That’s definitely an improvement.
Then I asked him which of his policies I wouldn’t like. He told me about his economic policies, and no, I did not like them. But he answered my question clearly. That puts him ahead of about 95 percent of politicians.
Like John Fetterman, another Democrat who is unrepentantly progressive yet doesn’t seem to hate our guts, his advantage is that he’s not going to make us angry. We’re not going to vote for him, but we might not get so mad that we turn out in full force to vote against him.
Read the whole thing here.
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