More Clear Thinking From Ann Coulter

Damn, okie. This is one for the books. I think I agreed with everything in your last post.

No offense, but I think the religious right has been the most overhyped threat in this decade's US politics.

How long can anyone last being so hateful without some kind of downfall?

Gala wrote:

How long can anyone last being so hateful without some kind of downfall?

I wonder that every day when I read many of the posts here.

McGentrix wrote:

Gala wrote:

How long can anyone last being so hateful without some kind of downfall?

I wonder that every day when I read many of the posts here.

I don't know that it is 'hatred' so much as a visceral discomfort many of us experience in seeing your lip gloss spread so thickly around this president's sphincter. That McGentrix. What a faggot.

A few newspapers have dropped her column, and some GOP presidential candidates condemned her statement -- who cares? As should be amply clear by now, there is virtually nothing that Ann Coulter can do that will cause her to be cast out of the bosom of the American right. And even if she was to lose her head and cross a line that even she can't cross -- calling Obama a "nigger" is about the only thing that would do the trick -- a thousand hissing Coulters would spring up to take her place.

For this isn't really about Coulter at all. This is about a pact the American right made with the devil, a pact the devil is now coming to collect on. American conservatism sold its soul to the Coulters and Limbaughs of the world to gain power, and now that its ideology has been exposed as empty and its leadership incompetent and corrupt, free-floating hatred is the only thing it has to offer. The problem, for the GOP, is that this isn't a winning political strategy anymore -- but they're stuck with it. They're trapped. They need the bigoted and reactionary base they helped create, but the very fanaticism that made the True Believers such potent shock troops will prevent the Republicans from achieving Karl Rove's dream of long-term GOP domination.

It is a truism that American politics is won in the middle. For a magic moment, helped immeasurably by 9/11, the GOP was able to convince just enough centrist Americans that extremists like Coulter and Limbaugh did in fact share their values. But the spell has worn off, and they have been exposed as the vacuous bottom-feeders that they are.

It will be objected that Coulter, Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage and their ilk are just the lunatic fringe of a respectable movement. But in what passes for conservatism today, the lunatic fringe is respectable. In the surreal parade of Bush administration follies and sins, one singularly telling one has gone almost entirely unremarked: Vice President Dick Cheney has appeared several times on Rush Limbaugh's radio show. Think about this: The holder of the second-highest office in the land has repeatedly chummed it up with a factually challenged right-wing hack, a pathetic figure only marginally less creepy than Coulter. Imagine the reaction if Al Gore, when he was vice president, had routinely appeared on a radio show hosted by, say, Ward Churchill. (The comparison is feeble: There really is no left-wing equivalent of Limbaugh, just as there is no left-wing equivalent of Father Coughlin or Joe McCarthy.) The entire American political system would melt down. Beltway wise men would trip on their penny loafers in their haste to demand Gore's head. Robert Bork would come out of retirement to call for a coup to restore the caliphate, I mean the Judeo-Christian moral law in America. Yet the grotesque Cheney-Limbaugh love-in doesn't raise an eyebrow. We're so inured to the complete convergence of "respectable" conservatism and reactionary talk-radio ravings that we don't even deem it worthy of comment.

Why liberals should keep complaining about Ann Coulter

by Ben Adler
TNR Online
03.16.07

The intra-liberal squabbles over Ann Coulter are back. Coulter, speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on March 2, 2007 (after being given a warm introduction by GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney) said, "I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'faggot.'" Her comment was greeted with laughter from the crowd.

When the blogosphere erupted in horror, high-minded liberal commentators argued that we'd all be smarter to ignore Coulter and her shenanigans than to dignify them with a response. [..]

Of course they're right that Coulter is a publicity hound--more performance artist than public intellectual. And engaging her extremist policy stances, like her assertion (in her syndicated column) that "the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East and sending liberals to Guantánamo," risks legitimizing them. But Alterman and others are wrong to pretend she doesn't exist. In fact, liberals should count their lucky stars that they have her, and they should publicize her every outrage [..].

Consider how it looks to moderate voters that a homophobic, anti-Arab zealot is so widely revered on the right. Her books sell hundreds of thousands of copies, she is praised by prominent Republicans, and she is welcomed at their events. When liberals highlight the bigoted or outlandish things she says, it is decidedly to their political advantage--reinforcing the queasiness that tolerant suburban swing voters feel about aligning with the right.

Conservatives don't seem to suffer from the same hesitancy that some liberals do to tar their opponents by blaming them for everything a controversial figure on their side says. Consider the case of Michael Moore. Moore, like Coulter, is brash and politically pugnacious; his films are widely watched and enjoyed on the left, though, as with Coulter, many of the more moderate members of his movement find him too strident. But the conservative pundits constantly try to paint the entire left as sharing every view that Moore holds.

For instance, the site www.rightwingnews.com named Moore the second-most-annoying liberal in America in 2003 and catalogued his offenses. [Moreover,] all of his views were imputed to the left: "Michael Moore is perhaps the most beloved figure of the American left," the site said.

And it probably works. Many conservative commentators speculated that Hollywood liberals actually cost John Kerry votes in 2004 because regular Americans were turned off by Fahrenheit 9/11. [..] William J. Bennett claimed, "[W]hen Michael Moore was given a seat in a presidential box at the Democratic convention, people took note of those values as well--and voted on them." While it's hard to pinpoint a specific cause for Kerry's loss, it's certainly clear that conservatives have, at the very least, nothing to lose--and, most likely, a good deal to gain--when they demonize the left for every inappropriate or controversial remark a liberal makes.

Indeed, conservatives have been clever enough to realize that a target doesn't even need to really be a liberal--much less command a major following on the left or endorse the Democratic candidate--to effectively smear Democrats. The conservative blog Patterico.com, compiled "examples of hate speech by prominent leftist figures" that included Louis Farrakhan, who has as little influence on the mainstream left as David Duke does on the mainstream right. Or consider right-wing activist and author David Horowitz's Discover the Networks website, which catalogues "activists for leftwing agendas and causes" and includes absurdly marginal, illiberal figures like Sami Al Arian and Amiri Baraka. This sort of stunt helps drum up donations and support for Horowitz's advocacy group. Why shouldn't liberals do the same? [..]

Luckily, best-selling right-wing authors and activists who give speeches at the Heritage Foundation make plenty of outrageous statements. Whether it's Michelle Malkin's argument in defense of interning Japanese-Americans during World War II, Coulter's defense of Joseph McCarthy, or anti-affirmative-action crusader Ward Connerly's acceptance of support from the Ku Klux Klan, liberals have plenty of material without having to make things up. And they should be willing to use it.

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Ben Adler is the editor of CampusProgress.org at the Center for American Progress. The views expressed here are his own.