Year after year, my heart really goes out to the College Republicans.

The popular complaint coming from these individuals seems to be the same every year — it’s frustrating to be politically conservative in a university full of liberal students, not to mention liberal professors.

Let me just say, I hear you loud and clear, College Republicans. It’s tough to be an ostracized party. For example, I hang out with a ton of people who eat ice cream and I’m really more of a sherbet girl and, man, is it ever hard to empathize with them!

I try to use logic and reason to explain to them my point of view and how much better rainbow sherbet tastes than anything in the custard family, but it’s like I’m talking and no one’s listening. So trust me — I have been in your exact situation.

Not every conservative politician is a racist homophobe obsessed with taking money from the poor and giving it to the rich. There are lots of conservative politicians with ethical domestic policies and smart fiscal ideas. What’s great though, is that you guys have the opportunity to bring in speakers who students can look up to and can dissuade liberal students from hating on the conservative side of politics.

So in the past two years, you guys chose Ann Coulter and Ron Paul?

Being isolated on a campus of contrarily minded individuals must be frustrating, and it must be hard to be taken seriously. But Ron Paul has about as much of a chance of being taken seriously as if the College Republicans invited a Care Bear to stand at the podium.

And not just any Care Bear: that goofy happy harmony one that’s always smiling and looks like it’s had a few Vicodin. And also doesn’t have any teeth.

It almost makes sense. Ron Paul is a libertarian, which in many ways makes him far more of a conservative-liberal hybrid than more staunch republicans in the political arena.

But there are a lot of libertarians who aren’t famous for supporting a “superhighway” that consists of a 10-lane emblem of danger stretching from Mexico all the way to Canada. Or who think that there’s no part of the Constitution that supports the separation of church and state outright — reading is hard! Maybe these other libertarians weren’t available that weekend.

A lot of liberal students will probably love Paul’s views that take issue with the strictness in barriers and fences that immigration has set up along the border of Mexico and Canada. But they may not share his paranoia that these borders are actually a conspiracy for the U.S. government to set the stage for a huge all-American concentration camp … yikes.

Eccentricity or blatant craziness aside, Paul is still probably a step up from last year’s speaker.

Liberals certainly do have a tendency to paint all conservatives as ignorant racists, which is absolutely unfair. But I do feel obligated to lend a piece of advice here — bringing Ann Coulter to a liberal university in an attempt to convince people that conservatives are modern, relevant and open-minded is sort of like trying to convince people you aren’t racist by dating Adolf Hitler.

But let’s be fair — College Republicans did defend their choice of Coulter by pointing out that she was a well-known Republican, which is totally true.

Ann Coulter is well known. She is super well known for calling our president “a retard” and for supporting the poll tax.

In one of her more memorable quotes, though (on Republicans vs. Democrats: “our blacks are better than their blacks”), Coulter references an individual who I think would make a great candidate for a College Republican speaker, and who I’m giving my official endorsement for looking into bringing next year: Herman Cain.

Can you say pizza party for every student on campus?

Bringing in famous conservative politicians is a great opportunity to turn the tables on this university full o’ hippies. Just don’t bring in people who suck so much at turning tables.

Chelsea DeBaise is a senior writing major at Syracuse University. She’s afraid she’s created a possible recurring nightmare for herself with the image of a Ron Paul Care Bear. She can be reached via email at cedebais@syr.edu or on Twitter @CDeBaise124.

Published on March 27, 2014 at 12:45 am