There’s nothing liberals love more than stalking conservatives with video cameras in the hopes of catching them saying something offensive. There are hundreds of YouTube videos dedicated to exposing “teabigots” and under-educated Republican voters. Therefore, it’s surprising that virtually no liberal blogs have posted a video from last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference.
In the video, a panelist named Ryan Sorba takes the stage and attacks the American Conservative Union for inviting a gay conservative group to co-sponsor CPAC.
“I’d like to condemn CPAC for bringing GOProud to this event,” he says. “Civil rights are grounded in natural rights. Natural rights are grounded in human nature…the intelligible end of the reproductive act is reproduction.”
This video should have been blogging gold for liberals, who regularly inform us that the Republican Party is full of gay-bashing rednecks. But at the time of this writing, it was nowhere to be found on major liberal blogs.
Maybe it’s because the crowd responded to Sorba by booing him off the stage.
“Yeah, sit down,” Sorba says to a group of young guys as they shout back at him. “The lesbians at Smith College protest better than you do.” The much-reviled “angry white males” are indeed angry. They’re mad about Sorba’s nasty and unprovoked attack on a group of fellow conservatives.
If Sorba’s views are so welcome among conservatives—especially young ones, who appeared to make up a majority of the crowd—why was he greeted with angry heckling instead of cheers?
The lack of bigotry must be painfully puzzling to liberals. My fellow Ohio College Republican Jesse Hathaway, a white, Christian, “anti-choice” straight guy, sat on the panel with Sorba.
“Every single person on stage with him was fighting the urge to facepalm,” he told me. (Urban Dictionary’s definition of “facepalm”: A spontaneous reaction to an amazingly stupid statement, where the face of the listener meets with his palm in a smacking manner.”)
That sentiment isn’t just shared by college-aged conservatives. On HotAir, a site founded by Michelle Malkin, a blogger had this to say:
“We are all stronger together, and gay conservatives are as much an ally of the conservative movement as heterosexual conservatives are. We are stronger by emphasizing our important commonalities rather than our less important differences. Fortunately, it appears the attendees at CPAC ‘10 agree.”
Another video you won’t see on any liberal blog features Alexander McCobin, the founder of Students for Liberty and one of Sorba’s co-panelists.
“In the name of freedom, I’d like to thank the American Conservative Union for welcoming GOProud as a sponsor of this event,” McCobin said. “If what you truly care about is freedom, limited government and prosperity, then this symbol is a step in the right direction.” His remarks are met with applause. In fact, one of the only people booing is Ryan Sorba.
It looks like CPAC, and the conservative movement in general, isn’t a haven for haters after all.