Let’s not bury the ethics lede: If it is irresponsible to treat a teenage climate change fanatic as a serious authority on international policy, and it is, it is similarly irresponsible to bestow the status of a journalist on a 15-year-old.

Yet the New Hampshire Republican Party, reminding us that the GOP isn’t called “the Stupid Party” for nothing, invited 15-year-old Quinn Mitchell to a June 27 town hall in Hollis, N.H. for fading presidential aspirant Ron DeSantis, and gave the boy press credentials. Morons, and Ethics Foul #1. The justification was (officially) that the kid has a political commentary blog, and a podcast, and says he’s attended more than 80 presidential campaign events since he was 10. That’s nice (but weird), and Quinn is evidently precocious and might be a real journalist some day (which the way things are going, is like saying he might be a real Stegosaurus some day), but that does not make him a journalist now. Some flack had the brilliant idea that inviting and credentialing a young conservative would be cute and show Generation Whatever that Republicans are cool. That flack needs to be fired.

Of course Quinn doesn’t think he’s a fake journalist and not qualified to inject himself into the proceedings, so when DeSantis foolishly called on him (“Aw, isn’t that cute, let’s see what the little feller wants to know…”), Mitchell asked a “gotcha!” question: Did the Florida governor believe that former President Trump had violated the law on Jan. 6, 2021? Naturally, the unprepared DeSantis huminahumina-ed his way through dodging it, and the video “went viral.”

That question was Ethics Foul #2, but you can’t blame Mitchell. Asking questions with an underlying agenda is a standard unethical journalism habit now, and the teen has no reason to think this isn’t what journalists are supposed to do. That’s what they have been doing his entire life.

Later, DeSantis’s handlers blocked Mitchell’s access to the candidate—“Oooh, watch out for that kid, he asks tough questions!” [Ethics Foul #3]—and finally, The Stupid Party committed Ethics Foul #4 by having its security officers forcibly remove him from the “First in the Nation Leadership Summit,” a candidate showcase organized by the New Hampshire Republican Party, featuring DeSantis and most of the other “I’m not Trump” hopefuls.

“They said, ‘We know who you are,’’ Quinn told the New York Times in a phone interview. Yup. They knew he was that 15-year-old who asks question candidates for President of the United Statesare afraid to answer. Can’t have that!

Of course, the anti-GOP mainstream media is lapping up this series of gaffes like Dracula sucks blood. Right on cue, The Stupid Party issued an “Oopsie!” statement, lying through its metaphorical teeth. A spokesman for the New Hampshire Republican Party “explained” that the teen’s removal had been a “mistake.” It sure was, but not the mistake the GOP hacks are now claiming. “During the course of the two-day event, an overzealous volunteer mistakenly made the decision to have Quinn removed from the event, thinking he was a Democrat tracker,” the flack texted. “Once the incident came to our staff’s attention, NHGOP let him back into the event, where he was free to enjoy the rest of the summit.”

Right, the mysterious “overzealous volunteer” excuse.

Look…

1. It’s great that a 15-year-old is so engaged in politics that he has a political blog and podcast, but that doesn’t make him a journalist, unless we want to jettison the whole concept that journalism is a profession and that practitioners have training, qualifications and standards. (Journalists are in the process of destroying that model anyway.) Don’t get me wrong: I bet that Quinn is more trustworthy and competent than all the so-called reporters on MSNBC, but that’s nothing to be proud of, being the lowest of low bars.

2. Minors should not be placed without supervision into adult activities or expected to deliver professional services rationally and competently. I repeat: Quinn was blameless in all of this mess; any 15-year-old given such an opportunity would jump at it: I would have. But he was being set up to fail, as well as to do tangible damage to the GOP in the two events.

3. The Hardy Boys wouldn’t have been real detectives even if they were real people, Marjoe Gortner wasn’t a real clergyman, Greta Thusnberg isn’t a climate scientist, and Amy Carter, whom her father infamously cited as an authority on nuclear proliferation when she was 13, wasn’t. The reason Democrats are periodically advocating lowering the voting age further is that teens are even easier to deceive than adult American voters, since their brains aren’t fully developed.

But to be fair, neither are the brains of those who run the Republican Party, based on this flagrant display of incompetence.