I don't know a conservative leader who hasn't been portrayed as a bumbling idiot"

Does William F. Buckley count? I think he got away with not being considered a moron largely because of his Locust Valley Lockjaw, an accent close enough to that of the Kennedys to get him a lot of grace he wouldn't otherwise have received.

But I can't think of any others.

You and I and all the rest of the mainstream, reasonable, modest, unassuming, conservative world can't get away with it, no matter how very intelligent we are. It's no different from getting called racist. We're called racists by the likes of Janeane Garofolo, but worse, we're called racist by our own friends, who know us and who know how much we're not racist. To them it doesn't matter how good our intentions might be, all they know is that we disagree with them and that ultimately means we're stupid, racist, and all the rest of that stable of nasty labels.

The funny part--on another political board that I used to participate in, everyone acted as if they had never heard of Dennis Prager. Neither support nor opposition to Prager's radio show or his ideas had ever been expressed. Others were named. Rush Limbaugh, of course, and everyone who had ever listened to him were denounced as racist. Then I happened to mention Prager and immediately the lefties were all over the name as if I had spread honey on a slice of steak and left it on the picnic table. And all the lefties knew--Prager is a racist.

This board has been active for ten years. We know each other. We know one another's attitudes. The only racist in the place is a fellow who believes that individual Muslims cannot be trusted to be non-violent, which isn't the same as saying they are all violent. But the lefties are positive that anyone who disagrees with them is not only a closet racist but that we can't discern who among the commentators we listen to aren't racist. We evidently can't tell a racist when we're listening to one. This is the worst of it, in my opinion.