It is interesting to see how modus operandi at the top of the Republican Party can trickle down into the lower levels of the party hierarchy. Over six and a half years of the Bush presidency, the country has become accustomed to the GOP's obsession with secrecy and penchant for saying things that are not true. It appears that the UW-Madison College Republicans have learned well from their elders.
In case you missed the Cardinal last week, College Republicans Chair Erica Christensen wrote a letter alleging that an organizer of the Distinguished Lecture Series informed her that no more conservative speakers would be invited to campus unless the next invitee filled the Union Theater to capacity. Two days later, Eric Dodge, associate director of the Wisconsin Union Directorate, responded in another letter saying there is no such attendance policy for lecturers.
It's not surprising that the Republicans chose to play the persecution card yet again. Their strategy for some time now has been to raise holy hell about their beliefs being trod upon by the media and elitist liberal universities. The idea that the WUD is cracking down on conservative speakers fits nicely into this storyline except for one little detail: It's not true.
In fact, the entire storyline is false. If it were true, the WUD would not have invited conservatives like Robert Novak, Frank Luntz and Dinesh D'Souza to speak on campus. If it were true, Fox News would not have far-and-away the highest ratings of any cable news network. If it were true, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter would not be rich and famous but rather impoverished and obscure, their right-wing views shut down by the liberal media bogeymen.
However, the Republicans have rarely allowed accuracy to get in the way of a good storyline. At the low levels, we see the College Republicans complaining about a made-up policy that fits with their theme of campus persecution. At the high levels, we see the Republican presidential administration invent a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11 so that the invasion of Iraq fits conveniently into the terrorism storyline.
The young Republicans have also learned their lessons well when it comes to opaqueness and arrogant disdain for explaining themselves to the public.
Absent from Christensen's letter was any response to the question of whether Ann Coulter is still invited to campus in light of her recent homophobic slurs at a Republican Party event. When I put this question to Christensen via e-mail, she delivered a non-answer that would have made Tony Snow proud. Then she asked me to drop the subject.
As we are reminded often in university housing, this campus is supposed to be a safe zone for everyone regardless of race, religion, ethnicity or sexual orientation. If the College Republicans are inviting to campus someone who has described Muslims as ""ragheads"" and gay people as ""faggots,"" they ought to be prepared either to defend the invitation in public or to rescind it and announce that Coulter gives conservatism a bad name.
Young Republicans can be forgiven to some extent for developing harmful political instincts by the fact that they have had exceedingly bad role models in the White House for the past six years. They have witnessed an administration that sanctions torture, fires U.S. attorneys who investigate politically sensitive cases and issues ""signing statements"" that say which laws the president can choose to ignore. And that's only in the past six months.
Perhaps it is coincidence and perhaps it is fate that the two leading contenders for the GOP presidential nomination, U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, are both mavericks whose administrations would possess vastly different tenors than the current one. This could well be a sign that even the party faithful are tired of the Bush/Cheney/Rove crowd's Soviet-like insistence on strict adherence to the party's version of reality.
The people who run the College Republicans may one day be running the national Republican Party. They should start setting a better example now by leveling with the campus about Coulter's invitation instead of regurgitating the same tired storylines they learned from their elders.
