Attack of the College Republicans

Reporting from the frontlines of the College Republican National Convention, Max Blumenthal profiles young conservative patriots who are making the ultimate sacrifice for their country during wartime, forsaking a chance at adventure and glory in Iraq to do the tough work on the ground here at home:

By the time I encountered Cory Bray, a towering senior from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, the beer was flowing freely. “The people opposed to the war aren’t putting their asses on the line,” Bray boomed from beside the bar. Then why isn’t he putting his ass on the line? “I’m not putting my ass on the line because I had the opportunity to go to the number-one business school in the country,” he declared, his voice rising in defensive anger, “and I wasn’t going to pass that up.”

And besides, being a College Republican is so much more fun than counterinsurgency warfare. Bray recounted the pride he and his buddies had felt walking through the center of campus last fall waving a giant American flag, wearing cowboy boots and hats with the letters B-U-S-H painted on their bare chests. “We’re the big guys,” he said. “We’re the ones who stand up for what we believe in. The College Democrats just sit around talking about how much they hate Bush. We actually do shit.”

Such as? Such as selling “Bush Country” tshirts in bulk. And putting his ass on the line against Saddam, Osama, and John Kerry via this crappy web game he developed. Or, as this excerpt from an August 2004 piece in Philadelphia Weekly suggests, eating a lot of meat:

A big Texan, he’s wearing a weathered Houston Astros baseball cap and a Bush/Cheney T-shirt. He has seven—one for each day of the week. Bray chugs his beers and brags of the large amounts of meat he can eat.

Generation Chickenhawk [Nation]
We’re the Anti-Establishment Now [Philadelphia Weekly]
Generation Chickenhawk [C & L]
No More Kerry [No More Kerry]

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