Before he decided to pop off about how "the negro" was possibly better off on the plantation than on the dole, I had no specific reason to believe Nevada rancher and inveterate moocher Cliven Bundy was a racist. (A brooding British heartthrob, perhaps, but not a racist.)

But if I had been consigliere to Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Dean Heller, Sean Hannity, or any of the dozens of conservative celebrities who rallied to Bundy's defense when the government came calling, I'm 100 percent certain I would've told them to back off. Don't hug that guy. It won't go over well. It's hard to put this delicately, but a tax-protesting, government-rejecting, gun-toting white rancher from the Old West is fairly liable to say and believe some pretty uncouth things, including about race. I didn't know Bundy was a racist until Thursday, but I was utterly unsurprised by the revelation. I doubt other liberals were terribly shocked either.

By contrast, many, many conservatives—even conservatives with presidential ambition—were caught completely flatfooted. They either didn't consider the risk, or lacked the intuition and judgment of their peers who managed to avoid falling into the Bundy trap.

And I think that tells us something about the racial blinders problem I wrote about earlier this month.

When certain conservatives object to liberal characterizations of the American right, and when they bristle at suggestions that conservative policies draw some of their political vitality from unreconstructed racists (or resentful white voters, or anything other than ideologically pure freedom fighters) they aren't playacting.