This was my first ever visit to a right-wing conference, and admittedly I was hoping for more theatrics or ostentation from the assembled crowd. It seemed like a relatively small audience—not even enough to fill the ballroom to capacity for the main lineup of presidential hopefuls—but perhaps after watching Netroots Nation grow hand over fist year by year, I'm spoiled on the size of the political conferences I attend. In any case, there was only one costumed tea party fanatic in neo-Bostonian colonial gear waving a Gadsden flag, and only one truck parked outside proclaiming that the end of the world would soon be upon us. The crazy, then, may not have come from the audience, but it most certainly emanated from the stage. And its commander-in-chief? Ted Cruz did his best to contend for the position, but the winner had to be Sarah Palin.

I hadn't heard her speak live before, and her time on stage was every bit as awe-inspiring as you can imagine. The sense of wonder started with the introductory montage, which concluded with a silhouette of a bear rearing up on its hind legs to roar. This may not sound funny in and of itself, but the production was so silly and cartoonish that it had most of the press row breaking sternly officious character and breaking out into giggles.

Palin's speech wasn't much better. Her speaking style has a grating combination of self-pity, mockery, and condescension, and it might be at least an interesting tenor for an address if her talk had anything resembling a beginning, middle, or end. Instead, it was roughly a half-hour of randomly organized sniveling attacks and efforts at self-defense, including a laughable tidbit about how Alaskans don't wear wedding rings because they are always chopping wood or skinning a moose. And of course, there was this classic quote that gave the address of the White House as 1400 Pennsylvania Avenue. It's a good thing she never became president; she would have gotten lost trying to find her way home.

But if the speakers were doing their best to tap into the zeitgeist of the attendees, it's clear that this year;s values voters are more afraid of Muslims than they are of the LGBT community (and perhaps just as afraid of the IRS as they are of Muslims). The lone possible exception was Rick Santorum, who described the failure to pass a constitutional amendment in the 1990s with an ominous "evil was allowed to endure" tone. Every speech gave at least some lip service to the notions of "traditional marriage" and preserving "religious liberty" from the hordes of well-funded same-sex activists, but in the sessions I observed, the attacks against LGBT rights were presented entirely in these coded terms of protecting Christians at home and abroad from discrimination. By contrast, it seemed that every speaker at the general session was petrified that they would be beheaded by a follower of ISIS at some point later that day.

But that shouldn't be taken to mean that the leaders of the values voters movement are conceding the point on marriage equality. Indeed, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) was a prominent presence, both in the plenary sessions and in the subsequent breakout panels. The upshot was always the same: an attempt to persuade the audience that despite the series of court rulings and public opinion polling supporting marriage equality, the fight was not over and that campaigning against marriage equality was still a winning issue. In fact, one of the breakout sessions on Saturday was led by NOM political director Frank Schubert, and attempted to lay out the case that marriage equality was not inevitable. The crux of the argument was two-fold: the first part was based on reading tea leaves from previous Supreme Court decisions that could imply that Justice Kennedy, who is widely viewed to be supportive of same-sex marriage, will actually uphold the rights of states to forbid equality should such a case be heard. The second was that all the polling indicating increasing support for same-sex marriage is skewed and you shouldn't believe it:



The third factor was that polls that showed majority for support for same-sex marriage had those findings because of "priming" where a series of questions leading up to a big question (like gay marriage) swayed the voter to say they supported same-sex marriage. That's all part of a strategy of the other side to mislead the public to think there's broad support for legalizing same-sex marriage, Schubert said. The tell, Schubert continued, is that advocates of gay marriage lean more on judges ruling that gay marriage bans are unconstitutional and less on individual states' votes on same-sex marriage. "If in fact the other side believed their rhetoric —that the game is changed, that people are now on their side, history is now at their door, don't you think that they would press votes to happen now?" Schubert.

Of course, Schubert wasn't just interested in unskewing polls; he also wanted to unskew facts. For instance, he claimed that if the Supreme Court upheld the rights of states to ban same-sex marriage, that Proposition 8 would once again be the law of the land in California. The problem, of course, is that Proposition 8 was found to violate the state's constitution, not the federal variety—so no matter what the SCOTUS does, marriage equality will still be the law in California.

I have but one regret about my time at the Values Voters Summit: that I could not attend more than one breakout panel. After NOM's amusing attempt to justify its own continued existence, I headed over to the panel named "How conservatives can win with millennials and women." After all, who wouldn't want to hear some conservative activists explain how they will find success preaching to a demographic that wants no part of what they stand for? The panels on common cause among social conservatives and libertarians was a tempting offer, as was the panel decrying the "hook-up culture." But in the end, I could not resist temptation. And I was not disappointed, for at panel I learned things that I simply did not know.

I learned that millennials oppose killing babies, until we hear it is a conservative position. I learned that the media is responsible for telling people that conservatism is bad. I learned that men are not involved enough in abortion politics, and need to have a bigger say in the decisions women make. I learned that Kristan Hawkins of Students For Life believes that "young, pretty girls" are best suited for recruiting fellow students into anti-abortion politics until Rand Paul did a filibuster on the topic, and then we couldn't get enough. And I also learned that hormonal contraceptives are "dangerous chemicals" like cigarettes and asbestos. In fact, I'd like to re-emphasize that point. Hawkins railed twice against the widespread availability of contraception because it is a dangerous chemical, just like cigarettes or asbestos.

What I didn't learn anything about was how conservatives intended to do anything to win over millennials and women besides saying the same crazy things they always say, except just a little louder this time. And come to think of it, that was the upshot for most of the summit. America is secretly on board with their agenda, regardless of what the polling says. And all it will take to cut through the media clutter that is making it look like Americans are against them is just to clap a little louder for Jesus

The best way to keep these crazy people on the sidelines? Throw in $5 right now to elect Democratic women up and down the ballot.