[reformedliberal]

I live about 90 miles from Madison and our area is full of many who dropped out and came here to live cheaply.

Last summer, I had a client of about 35 from Madison. In the course of our interaction, I discovered she was conservative and I asked if she felt marginalized in Madison. She said that everyone would be surprised at the strength of Republicans and conservatives in Madison. A month or so ago, I repeated this anecdote to a Bush-Cheney04 staffer who is 19 and had spent a year at UW-Madison. She nodded and agreed w/that assessment.

The students, faculty and fellow travelers get all the press, is my guess.

[July 4th]

I just finished my law degree at Madison about two weeks ago. There aren't a whole lot of hardcore conservatives here, but there are far fewer left-wing idiots than you would expect. For the most part, the campus gets its bad reputation because the left-wing groups are so vocal and are very good at organizing events that make their numbers seem larger than they really are. A huge portion of the campus is rational, intelligent, and associates with neither group during their years here.

With regards to groups like the College Republicans, we were always quite large - a few hundred members - because we were the only main group for Republicans to join. The Democrats split their alliances between the pro-abortion groups, the greens, etc., and never had the formal numbers that we did.