You know your political party is in trouble when the best speech at your convention is by someone who can't vote for four years and can't run for president until 21 years have fallen off the calendar.

If you're Atlanta teenager Jonathan Krohn, the newly minted star of a party in disarray, you try not to let the congratulations of luminaries like Joe the Plumber and Ann Coulter go to your head.

The Little Republican who turned 14 on Sunday became an Internet sensation when his speech at last week's Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., went viral.

The home-schooled child actor may look like an adolescent Rob Lowe, but he sounds more mature than Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal when he's at a podium.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was up to some partisan mischief when he called Rush Limbaugh the voice, energy and intellect of the Republican Party on CBS's "Face the Nation." I don't know if Bob Schieffer fell for it, but anyone who actually watched Rush's televised speech at CPAC last weekend knows it's pure hyperbole. The talk radio veteran took 90 minutes to say what Jonathan Krohn managed more coherently -- and concisely -- in two.

Sure, Rush threw lots of red meat to those who gathered in the ballroom of the Omni Sheraton Hotel to hear a rousing call-to-arms after a disastrous electoral rout in November, but it was nothing more than the usual politics of resentment he and his army of imitators serve up to the gullible and the agitated on the radio every day.

While arguably the GOP's biggest booster in the mainstream media, Rush Limbaugh is not the "brains" of the operation by any stretch of the imagination.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is my first-ever address to the nation," Rush kept repeating for comedic effect throughout his long-winded speech. It got so tedious, I could almost imagine Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro slow clapping out of frustration.

Broadcast live over CNN, Fox and C-SPAN, Rush Limbaugh took advantage of his "first-ever address to the nation" to do a lot of clowning that the more thoughtful conservatives of an earlier era would have found embarrassing.

Contrast this with the dignity and high-mindedness of Jonathan Krohn, standing at the same podium a day earlier. Using his hands like an experienced orchestra conductor, the young author of "Define Conservatism for Past, Present and Future Generations" thrilled the dispirited party faithful the way the 13-year-old Jesus amazed the Pharisees in the Temple of Jerusalem.

"During the election, I noticed so many people throwing around the words 'conservative' and 'liberal' and 'socialism,' " he said. "So I decide that there were too many people who threw the term 'conservative' around who didn't know what they were talking about."

At this point in the speech, Jonathan Krohn lost the Joe the Plumber faction of the audience: "They didn't understand conservatism as a base of principle, but they understood it as a base of policy," he said, letting the words sink in.

Pulling a page from Rush's book of funny voices, Jonathan continued with his critique of his clueless elders. He described being approached by mockers who blithely confuse Republicans and conservatives. "I always have to tell them. ... Conservatism is not about the party, 'cause the party is merely the shell. It's the inside, the filling that really means something."

He then identified respect for the Constitution, respect for life, less government and personal responsibility as the foundation of his politics.

"The principle itself is the key to conservatism," he said. "If you do not have a principled base, you do not have policies. If you do not have policies, in many ways you do not have ideology."

At that point, the swooning Republican guard were mere seconds away from rushing the stage and seizing Jonathan by force to make him the party's standard bearer in 2012, but he slipped from their grasp to finish his speech.

"Conservatism is not an ideology of feelings or romanticism as some people like to say," he said taking a veiled shot at the other party's messiah. "It is an ideology of protecting the people and the people's rights."

For daring to school the GOP on what it means to be a conservative, Jonathan Krohn received a standing ovation. But he's young and will probably grow out of it. Imagine how cool he'll be once he's out of puberty.