Torn Between Two Coulters

06 Mar, 2007 by John Hawkins

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The Coulter/Edwards CPAC saga continues on! Rush is now weighing in with words of wisdom for those who don’t understand why Ann Coulter has so many fans despite her outrageous outbursts:

“I’m looking at the blogs, and the bloggers are uniform in their condemnation of Ann Coulter. “This is disturbing and it’s distracting to the conservative movement. This is not what we’re about. It unnecessarily makes all conservatives a target for continuing attacks by the left,” and so forth and so on. Then some time passed and the bloggers began getting comments from their readers. After a couple of hours, I checked back, and the bloggers were mostly writing about how they were being excoriated by their readers for criticizing Ann Coulter; that finally somebody like Coulter had the guts to stand up and say what things are for, because the left gets away with this and does it all the time. The bloggers admitted that they were taking it on the chin from their readers in the comments of all their blogs from people who were very supportive of Coulter. I went to my own e-mail, and the vast majority of e-mail I got was, “Rah-rah,” and, “Right on!” I’ll tell you what I think this means.

There is free speech out there and there’s no question you can say what you want to say and you should be able to when you want to say it, but you can’t because of political correctness. I think that what inspired so many people to be supportive of what Ann Coulter said was — and I think this is something that Republican candidates need to understand. I’m sure many of you in this audience, not all of you, are fed up with the imbalance. For example, Bill Maher. Bill Maher can go out on his show on Friday night and basically say that it’s a shame that Dick Cheney wasn’t killed in the assassination attempt at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, that there would be a lot more people alive today if Dick Cheney were dead. He is asked if he really means it, and he said yeah. Even Barney Frank understood, who was a guest on the program. Even Barney Frank understood what Maher was saying. But take a look at the difference in coverage that the Bill Maher example got (hardly any) to Ann Coulter and her remarks about the Breck Girl. I think she might have been able to say it better. She might have been able to say that she was making a point about free speech and how you can’t say certain things without getting sent to rehab and this sort of thing.

I think what people misunderstand about the rank-and-file in the Republican Party is that they’re sick and tired of taking it on the chin day in and day out. The mainstream press can assault every one of our icons. The mainstream press, the Drive-By Media and the left, can assault every one of our presidential candidates. They can call George Bush “Hitler.” They can write movies on how Bush ought to be assassinated, do movies and produce them; write books on how Bush ought to be assassinated; can say that they wish Cheney had been killed — and there is no condemnation of it. There are a lot of people in the so-called conservative movement who are fed up with the docileness of Republican leaders in Congress, and even in the White House, who just sit by, don’t respond, and just take this stuff.

…So when somebody like Ann Coulter comes along and says what she said, they simply react to it. “All right! Somebody’s fighting back! Somebody is saying something in return to these people and pointing out their hypocrisy.” I think that’s why the support that is there for Ann Coulter is there, because she represents something that the leadership of the party doesn’t provide them. The leadership of the movement these days doesn’t provide them an outlet for their own anger. You know, individuals are sitting out there roasting and frying and getting angry each and every day at the things that are in the Drive-By Media: the unfairness, the imbalances, the constant defense of the people who are invested in defeat of their own country. They’re never called on it. It’s never portrayed. The Democrats and the left in this country are never portrayed for who they really are in the Drive-By Media. The White House won’t say it and many of the Republican leaders in the House and Senate won’t say it. They won’t be critical of anybody. The Drive-Bys totally give Bill Maher a pass for wishing that Dick Cheney were dead, and saying that more people would be alive were that the case.”

On the one hand, it’s not just that Ann Coulter used the word f*ggot in connection to John Edwards. It’s that by using that word, she played to a stereotype about conservatives, that they hate gays — at the biggest conservative event of the year — when the presidential contenders were there — and this is the 2nd year in a row that she’s said something offensive at CPAC. Moreover, it’s not just this one remark. She semi-regularly says things like this just to get a reaction.

That puts conservatives, who, unlike liberals, feel a need to be consistent about their actions in a bind. Would conservatives criticize a liberal for saying the sort of outrageous things Ann Coulter says? Absolutely. So conservatives feel compelled to rip Ann as well — and we do. Her outburst was heavily criticized across the right side of the blogosphere and that’s on top of her finish in the number 6 slot as the most disliked person on the right in a poll last year.

On the other hand, a lot of conservatives are sick and tired of the enormous double standard between the left and right. Duke Cunningham gets bribed and goes to jail, which is as it should be. But, William Jefferson gets bribed and he’s sitting on the Homeland Security Committee. Ann Coulter says something offensive and she gets ripped up one side and down the other by the right. Left wingers say and do offensive things and they get almost blanket support from the left. Look at Ted Kennedy, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Kos, Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, Ted Rall, Ray Nagin, John Murtha, Harry Belafonte, John Kerry, Charles Rangel, Jane Fonda, Bill Maher, Bob Fertik, Seymour Hersh, Mike Malloy, Randi Rhodes, Howard Dean, Cynthia McKinney, Robert Byrd, Bill Moyers, James Wolcott, Margaret Cho, and the whole New York Times among many, many others. What price have any of these people paid on the left for being obnoxious creeps and/or criminals?

None whatsoever.

So, I haven’t agreed with things Ann has said in the past, I didn’t agree with what she said at CPAC (and don’t think they should invite her back), and I fully anticipate criticizing things that she says in the future. However, what I don’t anticipate doing in the future is figuratively kicking her under a bus for the good of conservatism as long as the wretched hive of villainy listed above is still in the good graces of the left. When they get rid of their dozens and dozens of black sheep, then maybe Ann will have to go. But as long as liberals are allowed to compare Bush to Hitler and accuse conservatives of hating blacks, the poor, and old people without suffering any consequences on the left, then Ann is OK with me.

Also see,

Ann Coulter’s Juvenile Comment At CPAC