Kevin Jones at Philokalia Republic remarks on Kleinheider’s Foley comments: 

There are few men lonelier than a social conservative at a College Republicans meeting. If he is vocal, he will likely never get a leadership position, or even a date. At most, he may receive a few patronising words.

Happily, I steered clear of the College Republicans at H-SC (I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the Grand Old Party), and unsurprisingly found more common ground on at least certain questions of policy with the greens and liberals who worked on the college newspaper.  This was inevitable at a campus where Republicans outnumbered all others by a ratio of 90-10 and the College Democrats set record membership with six people (I exaggerate only slightly about the latter). 

If the advantage of going to H-SC was in making connections with well-placed people, I am confident that I completely frittered away that advantage with my editorials damning NATO intervention in Yugoslavia, saying positive things about A Republic, Not An Empire, criticising John McCain after his visit to campus and taking a dim view of his “let’s get involved in Chechnya!” appeal.  But judging from the moral habits of some at H-SC, my guess would be that social conservatism would go over like a lead balloon.  It’s so stodgy and hardly the kind of thing that would impress the girls from Hollins.  However, if there was one thing that virtually everyone could have agreed on at H-SC, it was that homosexuality was wrong and abominable.  But then H-SC may not be terribly representative of young Republican attitudes elsewhere, as it is one of only two all-men’s colleges left. 

But Kevin is making a more important point than the consequences of young Republican disdain for their social conservative associates:

Functional libertarianism is the order of the day among these aspiring politicos. I would be interested in learning whether the same culture is manifest among the abused page corps. Did they, too, pride themselves on their acceptance of alternative sexual orientations while they looked the other way?Considering the party’s feeder organizations, it’s little surprise that the GOP leadership shied away from criticizing Foley’s “private life” until its crapulence spilled into the public eye.