Not to pick on the Ivy model of Rhode Island’s College Republican collection, but this line from Sean Quigley, second vice chairman of the College Republican Federation of Rhode Island, treasurer of the Brown College Republicans, and Brown Daily Herald columnist, is too precious to let pass:

“I don’t mean to sound elitist, but we tend to be a bit more intellectual,” he said. “That’s not to mean others are less intellectual, but the environment we find ourselves in allows for more exchange of abstract ideas than mundane analysis of policy.”

Being myself (as the article goes on to state) interested in intellectual discussion, I wanted to see what the elephant yutes at Brown are up to, but their campus Web site is still advertising a Dinesh D’Souza lecture from March 2005. The reality of “high-powered alumni” means little, I’d suggest, if a group isn’t gaining the experience of the less intellectual kids whom its not more intellectual than keeping things organized and current and doing all that mundane policy analysis stuff like debates and editorials and developing enumerated statements of principle (which are hardly intellectual at all).