Even thouogh Ann Coulter endorsed Mitt Romney, did she really seal his doom?...Repubican bloggers want to know.
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____Ann Coulter's Big, Ugly, Selfish Mouth
By kowalski Posted in 2008 — Comments (120) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Now that the reflexive handwringing and looking over the shoulder has commenced and died down, and now that all three major candidates have condemned what Coulter said, and now that we've had the full spectrum of tiresome views on Ann Coulter (including mine) aired here at RedState, I'd like to offer some final thoughts on the matter.
Ann Coulter's remarks at CPAC were crass and bigoted, and she dropped them into her schtick so that she could end with a bang and get some cheap publicity at the expense of everyone at CPAC. She succeeded beyond her wildest expectations: she became front-page news at the New York Times and she's raising money for John Edwards hand over fist. Moreover, she was instrumental in whipping up the moonbat base, who acted just as everyone expected they would and rolled on over here to RedState to denounce us as Nazis and dump their vats of profane sewage all over the place.
So all of us, in other words, are having to work overtime to try to undo what Ann Coulter said. I support the calls for a shunning. Some people I respect are defending her and are shunning the shunning. Other people are trying to forget it ever happened. And our Editors and poor Clayton are having to deal with the trolling.
And that's one of the other problems with having a loose cannon like Ann Coulter endorsing your candidates at your premiere conference: you can't count on her not to think exclusively of herself and hurt everyone else in the process. How much did CPAC pay to have Coulter speak? Is Coulter going to write a check to all of us to help pay for the wasted time over her scurrilous remarks?
Perhaps the worst thing Coulter did with her bigoted tongue, though, was to hand the Democrats yet another free pass, over a weekend when the stories should have gone completely in the other direction. This weekend, if Ann had just found a way to exit the stage without going off like a female suicide bomber, it would have been the Donks falling over themselves to explain their insanity to Middle America. We had Bill Maher saying that he's sorry Cheney wasn't killed in Afghanistan. We had the revelation that Wellesley succumbed to pressure (and lies!) from the Clinton White House to seal Hillary's undergraduate thesis on Saul Alinsky. We had the crackpot from the Huffington Post telling everyone about how he likes Republican women but thinks everyone at CPAC is a chickenhawk. And there was more. (Edit: exactly right!)
But all of it got swamped by Ann Coulter and her ridiculous 10 seconds of self-promotion. By dragging us down to their rhetorical level at CPAC, Coulter gave everyone in the Donk Universe another free pass and another chance to Pass Go and Collect $200.
It's indisputable that it's Coulter's right to say any vile, harebrained thing she can come up with. It's a free country, and she's got a big mouth, after all. Nobody is going to put her in jail for being an idiot. But it's not indisputable that we have to put up with it, and it's especially galling because were it not for her antics, this CPAC would have been an unqualified and unsullied success. If we continue to make tactical mistakes of this kind, the Democrats will win -- because we know the double standard exists, and we know that the opprobrium always, always hits Republicans and Conservatives ten times harder. Whoopi Goldberg could get up tomorrow morning and call half the Republican party a group of "Faggot Nazi Christofascists" and she would get applause and a guest spot on The View.
Like it or not, even at our internal gatherings (and actually, especially at our internal gatherings), we have to set the standard, because we will be held to it, unfairly or not. That's how this country works. That's how our political spin machine functions. Someone needs to have a sit down with Coulter and explain this to her, before she does any more damage, to herself or to us.
And with that, I end my commentary on "L'affaire Coulter".
[Update: It's especially clear to me now that the target of Coulter's words were actually Mitt Romney. Watch the videos on YouTube, which are now featuring Romney leading into Coulter. Here | and Here.]
I THINK the Romney campaign made an enormous error in letting her speak on his behalf after being introduced by the candidate. I ALSO THINK CPAC made an enormous error inviting her.
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