Liberals continually expect that conservatives will match the cartoonish image that the left has concocted. They were shocked that Christian conservatives didn’t run Sarah Palin out of town on a rail because of her pregnant unwed daughter. Aren’t conservatives prudes and intolerant misogynists? Umm, no. Now, they can’t believe conservatives are so accepting of  Ken Mehlman, who publicly announced he is gay. You can sense the disappointment and surprise on the left — aren’t conservative going to repudiate him? No, nor do most of them even care.

I think the problem is this: liberals have more friends who are gay than friends who are conservative…  or evangelical… or gun owners. They often accuse conservatives of living cloistered lives, but it is urban liberals who congregate in homogeneous communities ( e.g., San Francisco, West L.A.) and may live their entire lives without forming a serious relationship with anyone who doesn’t ascribe to their laundry list of inviolate truths (e.g., global warming is real, abortion-on-demand is sacred, government creates jobs). They don’t much bother to understand conservatives’ rationales for their positions — so much easier to assume they are rooted in ignorance or bigotry. Or as Michelle Obama put it, “meanness.”

This is why liberal media outlets try to hire reporters to cover the “conservative” beat. Like Margaret Mead, they are supposed to go trampling in far-off lands and report back on the natives’ habits and customs. If they really understood and knew conservatives, they would have no need for a special-assignment reporter.

It has been and remains a great advantage for conservatives — they understand their ideological opponents far better than their opponents understand them. That is why Harry Reid is amazed Hispanics can be Republicans, the left can’t imagine there is an explanation for Ground Zero mosque opposition other than Islamaphobia, and Obama treats his gun- and Bible-clinging countrymen as if they were aliens. Actually, to him and many of his ilk, they are.