Category: Ann Coulter

Incredible mind, inspirational lady.

Hey, Remember That Crazy Conspiracy Theory Glenn Beck Was Talking About?

Posted on Comments

According to every Serious Foreign Policy Pundit, it’s absolutely insane for Beck to assert that the Left and the Islamists are in alliance to bring revolution to the Middle East. However, as Donald Douglas points out, that’s what the Left is telling us:

The neo-Stalinist ANSWER homepage has the announcement, “Emergency demonstrations: Stop all U.S. aid to Mubarak dictatorship” . . .
Code Pink’s Jodie Evans . . . served as a top campaign fundraiser for Barack Obama, and now her organization is leading a fundraising operation for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt: “Code Pink: Obama, Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood Ally Raising (Tax Exempt) Money to Overthrow Egypt Gov’t” . . .

But don’t let yourself be distracted by mere facts. Bill Kristol says Glenn Beck is “hysterical” and it must be true because, after all, Bill Kristol is a Serious Foreign Policy Pundit and Glenn Beck is just . . . well, he’s just Glenn Beck, right?

And really, who is this Lisa Graas person who tells us about “Five Revolutions Backed by George Soros”?

“The Soros centre’s job in eastern Europe is nearly finished. Its main focus now is the Islamic world, Arab countries, Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc.”

Oh, that’s not a quote from Lisa Graas. That’s a 2007 quote by Dr. Kian Tajbakhsh, a consultant for the Soros-funded Open Society Institute.

But don’t believe that crazy conspiracy-theory stuff. Trust the Serious Foreign Policy Pundits. Because they’ve never been wrong before.

My friend Dr. James Joyner, however, is of another opinion:

Going back at least to William F. Buckley, Jr.’s famous article casting the John Birch Society out of the legitimate conservative moment, it has been understood that letting the fringe define the cause hurts it. Buckley correctly reasoned that Birch founder Robert Welch’s crazy and outrageous conspiracy theories were tainting the legitimate anti-Communist movement.
Similarly, the psychotic rantings of Glenn Beck invite ridicule on the rest of us. Legitimate points are inevitably countered by comparisons with absurd variants by Beck, Coulter, Limbaugh, and others who make a living stoking the fears of the base. This is, at best, a distraction from the debate and, often, makes intelligent discussion of the issues next to impossible because they’ve been preemptively framed by the loudest, most shrill, most hyperbolic voices.

How many times have we heard variations of this argument? 

“Oh, Buckley purged the Birchers and therefore, we must now cast aside Uncouth Person X and distance ourselves from Populist Organization Y, because above all else, the Official Conservative Movement must maintain its precious respectability!”

If we had listened to that argument in 2009, there never would have been a Tea Party movement. Republicans would have rolled over and played dead and gone along with the whole Obama/Pelosi/Reid agenda because it was not respectable to oppose Keynesian “stimulus” spending, cap-and-trade, nationalized health care, and so forth.

Now that “the loudest, most shrill, most hyperbolic voices” have succeeded in fomenting grassroots opposition, however, we are told that elected representatives must ignore the people who elected them and, instead, must heed those respectable voices who did nothing at all to help encourage the Tea Party movement.

Hey, let’s dump Ann Coulter because, after all, “the Age of Ann has passed,” right? She’s only the author of, what, five or six New York Times bestsellers?

Yeah, let’s get rid of Coulter because a bunch of bloggers said so.

Purge Coulter! Purge Beck! Purge Sarah Palin! Purge Mark Levin! Purge Rush Limbaugh!

Purge! Purge! Purge!

And keep right on purging until the only people inside the Big Tent are respectable Republicans like Mike Castle, Lincoln Chafee, Arlen Specter and Charlie Crist, and the motto of the Official Conservative Movement becomes, “Me, Too.”

UPDATE: Linked by The Great One: “Cool it with the Stalinist purge crap.”

UPDATE II: Please permit me to point out that, while any conservative who mentions the influence of George Soros is portrayed as a dangerous conspiracy kook, it is perfectly acceptable for liberals to demonize the Koch brothers as right-wing puppetmasters.

UPDATE III: Did I ever mention that you never want to make Dan Riehl pissed off at you?

‘The Most Bald-Faced Lie I Have Ever Read in the New York Times’

Posted on Comments

“And that’s saying something,” says Ann Coulter:

[T]hat paper implied Loughner is a pro-life zealot. This is the precise opposite of the truth. . . .
ABC News reported: “One Pima Community College student, who had a poetry class with Loughner later in his college career, said he would often act ‘wildly inappropriate.’
“‘One day (Loughner) started making comments about terrorism and laughing about killing the baby,’ classmate Don Coorough told ABC News, referring to a discussion about abortions. ‘The rest of us were looking at him in shock … I thought this young man was troubled.’
“Another classmate, Lydian Ali, recalled the incident as well.
“‘A girl had written a poem about an abortion. It was very emotional and she was teary eyed and he said something about strapping a bomb to the fetus and making a baby bomber,’ Ali said.”
Here’s the Times’ version: “After another student read a poem about getting an abortion, Mr. Loughner compared the young woman to a ‘terrorist for killing the baby.'”

Ace of Spades gave a nice hat-tip to Nice Deb for finding that. Because Ace is good like that.  Continue reading ‘The Most Bald-Faced Lie I Have Ever Read in the New York Times’ →

Malkin and Coulter Underrated?

Posted on Comments

Conservative Home, a new Web site run by people you never heard of, has published the results of a survey of “1,152 Republican activists” identifying their favorite pundits.

The top five are Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Charles Krauthammer, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity — i.e., the top talk-radio star, three Fox News hosts and and a Washington Post columnist who appears frequently on Fox News.

Before you say “epistemic closure,” let me point out that Michelle Malkin is ranked No. 7 and Ann Coulter No. 9 on the list. Both of them are more conservative than O’Reilly or Newt Gingrich (No. 6) and both of them have written important, heavily-researched books that were also huge bestsellers.

Malkin’s Invasion must be ranked as the best book on immigration policy since Peter Brimelow’s Alien Nation (which is very high praise) and In Defense of Internment . . . my God, talk about poking the hornet’s nest of political correctness with a stick.

As for Coulter, her books are much better than is suspected by people who know her only for her snarky jabs on TV. As for her right-wing bona fides, I still remember the shock of reading Godless, in which she described Joe Sobran as her “mentor.” If you know anything about Sobran, that one reference ought to give you pause the next time you hear some idiot dismiss Coulter as a “neo-con.” 

Malkin and Coulter and George Will (No. 10) would all rank above O’Reilly in any fair ranking of conservative pundits, but “favorite” is not the same as “most conservative,” of course. I’m also surprised that Mark Levin didn’t make the list, but you see that — with the exception of Limbaugh and Will — the basic factor here seems to be, “Who gets the most airtime on Fox?”

The Conservative Home editors themselves have other concerns:

Worryingly, columnists often regarded as among the most thoughtful conservatives did not fare well. David Brooks of the New York Times only mustered a mention from 1.3% of the panel (14 people). Ross Douthat, also at the NYT, won just four votes and Mike Gerson, Washington Post writer and former speechwriter to President Bush, gets just three mentions.

These omissions are entirely understandable:

  • David Brooks is not a conservative, period. He has described himself as a “moderate,” and I say we take his word for it.
  • Douthat is conservative and, as the editors say, “thoughtful,” but his thoughtfulness manifests itself as an unwillingness to reach out, smack liberals upside the head and yell, “You’re wrong!” (Metaphorically, of course.) A good conservative pundit has to be confrontational toward liberalism, and aggressively so. This has been true of every great pundit of the Right since Buckley smacked Yale upside the head in 1951.
  • The basic problem with Gerson can best be summarized in the phrase “former speechwriter to President Bush.” Gerson recently wrote a good column, which makes him 1-for-the-season by my count. In general, Gerson’s prose is boring and bland. David Frum considers Gerson his intellectual inferior and this is one point where even Frum’s worst enemies wouldn’t argue with him.

It is possible to be erudite and serious without being pompous, snobby, wishy-washy or dull, and the Brooks/Douthat/Gerson troika can’t seem to transcend that hurdle.

How Gay Is the WikiLeaker?

Posted on Comments

So gay, these aren’t even the funniest lines in Ann Coulter’s column about Bradley Manning:

What constitutes being “openly” gay now? Bringing a spice rack to basic training? Attending morning drills decked out as a Cher impersonator? Following Anderson Cooper on Twitter?
Also, U.S. military, have you seen a picture of Bradley Manning? The photo I’ve seen is only from the waist up, but you get the feeling that he’s wearing butt-less chaps underneath. He looks like a guy in a soldier costume at the Greenwich Village Halloween parade.
With any luck, Bradley’s court-martial will be gayer than a Liza Minelli wedding. It could be the first court-martial in U.S. history to feature ice sculptures and a “Wizard of Oz”-themed gazebo. “Are you going to Bradley’s court-martial? I hear Patti LaBelle is going to sing!” . . .

Read the whole gay thing. And whereas Manning is hilariously gay, Wikileaks fugitive Julian Assange is seriously weird.

Total Security Absurdity

Posted on Comments

Gropegate continues to make news and inspire commentary:

Ann Coulter, meanwhile, offers a relevant clue:

Tip for the TSA: When your agents are asking passengers for their autographs, you’re probably not on the verge of nabbing Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. . . .
If security guards at a big, fat terrorist target like the U.S. Capitol can be expected to figure out that members of Congress aren’t a threat, why don’t we trust TSA agents to figure out that little grandmothers, nuns and 8-year-olds aren’t a threat either?

And she mentions my pet peeve about flying:

But all those people have to take their shoes off, remove their computers from their luggage and be subjected to a pat-down because TSA agents are prohibited by the Homeland Security Department from using an ounce of common sense.

The whole security-screening process annoys me, but having to remove my laptop from my carry-on is the worst of it. I carry my laptop in a backpack that’s always crammed with newspapers, magazines and sundry other stuff. The process of taking out the laptop, putting it in a separate bin, then putting it back in after I’ve passed through the screening — a total hassle. And all because three or four years ago, there was some tip that al-Qaeda had figured out how to rig laptops as bombs.

There is never an end to it. Once something becomes part of the screening process, it remains permanently part of the process and, as Coulter says, it’s all because TSA is forbidden to use common sense: I’m not a terrorist threat.

The Middle-Aged Journalist Jihad has never been a serious danger to American air travelers. Of course, if common sense were allowed by TSA,  if they reserved the more intensive screening procedures for people who might actually be terrorists — people with names like “Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab” — this would be “discrimination.”

And so they’re going to keep hassling us forever.

Will Republicans Let SPLC Run RNC?

Posted on Comments

During the Nov. 9 American Spectator gala in Washington, I had a chance to talk briefly to my friend RNC Chairman Michael Steele. There is, of course, a movement afoot to replace Steele, and Michigan’s Saul Anuzis has already declared himself a candidate for the chairmanship. Liberals are doing everything they can to demonize Anuzis:

[T]his week, the Southern Poverty Law Center revealed that Anuzis has defended and endorsed a vocal right-wing extremist named Kyle Bristow, who was the head of the Michigan State University chapter of Young Americans for Freedom (MSU-YAF). “This is exactly the type of young kid we want out there,” Anuzis said on a radio program in May 2007. “I’ve known Kyle for years and I can tell you I have never heard him say a racist or bigoted or sexist thing, ever.” . . .
Thanks to Bristow’s leadership, the SPLC — which tracks extremist groups — designated the MSU-YAF as a hate group in 2006. . . .
It should be noted that Anuzis’ defense of Bristow came almost a full year after MSU-YAF’s exploits were made public, and after the SPLC designated him as the leader of a hate group.

Kyle Bristow is a big, rowdy kid who is now in law school in Ohio. Anuzis’s defense of Bristow in 2007 — more than three years ago, when Bristow was still an MSU undergrad — cannot be plucked out context as evidence that Anuzis endorses everything Bristow has said or done.

Let’s hope that RNC delegates are smart enough to ignore such a cheap guilt-by-association trick.

Whether or not Steele is replaced — by Anuzis or anyone else — Republicans have got to stop letting their enemies exercise a veto. What the RNC needs as chairman is someone who speaks for the party and can raise a lot of money. Without prejudice toward either Steele or Anuzis, I nominate Ann Coulter.

Just to see the SPLC go completely batshit insane.

UPDATE: Dan Collins at Piece of Work in Progress informs us that Steele has reportedly hired his former personal assistant as “liaison” to the 2012 GOP convention in Tampa. For $15,000 a month.

UPDATE II: Brian Bolduc of National Review interviews Anuzis:

“There are literally thousands of major donors who have left the party and haven’t given to us in some time . . . I think we need a nuts-and-bolts person.”

A. Because I’m Not Ann Coulter

Posted on Comments

Q. Why don’t I try to get away with writing stuff like this?

Last year, a Muslim attempting to murder Prince Mohammed bin Nayef of Saudi Arabia blew himself up with a bomb stuck up his anus. Fortunately, this didn’t happen near an airport, or Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano would now be requiring full body cavity searches to fly.

Read the whole thing. There is only one Ann Coulter. If there were eight more of her, she’d be the Supreme Court — in your dreams.

Obligatory: ‘Hey, Did Anybody Notice That Allen West and Tim Scott Are Black?’

Posted on Comments

Video via The Right Scoop:

Quoted at The Hill:

“So I think that the — the liberal progressives saw the strength of the grass-roots movement that we call the Tea Party which stands for ‘taxed enough already’ and they tried to turn against it,” Rep.-elect Allen West (R-Fla.) said Friday on “Hannity” on Fox News.
“And the number one thing that you always try to do to silence an opponent in the United States of America is to call someone a racist.”
West said that attempts to tarnish the Tea Party did not foil his campaign. “And we see that that did not work whatsoever,” he said.

Ann Coulter: “MSNBC is still searching for the ‘Republicans are racist’ angle in all of this.” And speaking of MSNBC, I like Allahpundit’s take on Keith Olbermann’s suspension:

If you’re going to rant against the other team every night, own it. Please, no more Murrow-esque professions of avoiding the voting booth in the name of objectivity when you’re on the air five hours a week screeching about wingnut fascists and the racist dystopia they’re about to impose on America.

Someone needs to compile a highlight reel of Olbermann’s most hyperbolic pronouncements about the Impending Dark Night of Fascism. He’s done that Martin Niemoller lecture so often — we’re always just one election away from cattle cars and concentration camps — that even liberals must be tiring of it by now.

UPDATE: Susannah Fleetwood has this video of an earlier “Fox and Friends” interview with Tim Scott:

This year, a record total of 13 black candidates won Republican congressional primaries, two of whom won their elections Nov. 2. Another candidate we covered extensively here, Charles Lollar, got just 35 percent against Steny Hoyer in Maryland’s 5th District, but fared well in Calvert and St. Mary’s counties.

We should remember that Allen West didn’t win his first campaign against Ron Klein in 2008, and we should also keep in mind that district lines will be re-drawn before the 2012 election. Black GOP candidates who didn’t win this year ought to be encouraged to try again, using the fundraising and other resources they developed in 2010 as the basis for building stronger campaigns for 2012.