Last night I watched a recording of Wednesday's CNN debate between the Republican Candidates at the Reagan Library in California. Huckabee, Romney, McCain and Ron Paul all took part having first greeted a very elderly looking Nancy Reagan. I have to say the whole thing was thoroughly unedifying and did little to inform the viewer about the issues. McCain and Romney spent most of the time hurling mild insults at each other about their respective records. Romney in particular was very spiky. I'm sure the man has some redeeming factors, but I'm damned if I can identify a single one. A full report of the debate is HERE.John McCain is being interviewed on CBS's FACE THE NATION as I write this. He has a quiet confidence about him. He has come in for some real flak from the right of the Republican Party, who seem to think he is not a "real Conservative". Indeed, the harridan-in-chief, Ann Coulter, has said that if he becomes the nominee she will vote and campaign for Hillary Clinton. Well that's one very good reason to support McCain. Coulter represents everything I hate about the Republican right. She gives them a bad name and alienates those great swathes of centrist voters who the Republicans need to win back.
44 comments:
Labour MP Sadiq Khan- who would have known about this in the commons -- the ensuing scandal will be bigger than Conway
I loathe Coulter's 'work'. I was wandering through Walmart a few months ago on a visit to the States and ran across one of her books. I say book; I mean hate-filled diatribe with the intellectual content of a three-week-old dog turd. Reading her, you being to fear for the future of America as a united country. And I say this as someone who's probably to the right of McCain! No sir (as they say over there) - if she's against McCain, then I'm definitely for him.
Have you ever considered that MANN Coulter resembles clinically sane Melanie Phillips?
I've devised a theory that they should become lovers. Then when they both have what they REALLY want, they won't be so angry and frustrated, and will consequently stop writing such idiocies.
Ann Coulter is a proper conservative unlike McCain or you.
Ann Coulter can be deliberately provocative. But her coruscating attacks on the liberal left, especially on the New York Times, really hit the mark.
She is also a heartfelt anti-abortionist, which strikes a chord with me.
If America has any sense it'll vote for McCain. He's a real hero who fought for his country, unlinke Bushie and Clinton. And he's not prepared to pander to the right-wing nutters who've gotten a stranglehold on a once great country. He's honest, and seems to be prepared to say what he believes in, rather than what his audience wants to hear. Unlike Romney.
Hillary Clinton is representative of the darker side of politics, whereas McCain, and Obama, seem to represent something new.
Please America - go for McCain or Obama. If 'Hilldog' gets Coulter's backing, that's all you need to know. Coulter, and her ilk, have ruined America, and Clinton doesn't offer any real change!
Iain, What was that Ronald Reagan said about never speaking ill of a fellow Conservative?
Lots of people describe Coulter and her views as hateful. However, I think this says more about those people than her. It is a typical example of playing the man rather than the ball.
For example, Coulter has been criticised for saying the Christians are 'perfected' Jews, which is logical if you are a Christian, just as secular people regard themselves as perfected Christians or Muslims regard themselves as perfected infidels. In criticising her right to express such an opinion the media has behaved in exactly the same way that the Jewish leaders of the time responded to Jesus. Instead of engaging with his argument; they simply sought his death.
Much of the modern secular commentariat is identical in much of its attitudes to the Sadducees of Jesus' time.
Scary, if Ann Coulter were a Conservative, you might have a point. She's not. She's a zealot.
Read Ann Coulter on the death of her father a few days ago. It is a beautifully written piece, and not at all mawkish.
4:00 pm British time writes: "Reading her, you being to fear for the future of America as a united country" Wow! 301m Americans and you think Anne Coulter is going to divide them?
Maybe you should stay out of Wal-Mart. I think they're pumping something through the air-conditioning.
Asquith - You're a nasty little piece of work, aren't you? Slinging sexual innuendos - a product of your very overheated imagination - around about people who wouldn't let you over their threshholds.
Ann Coulter is witty and astute. I like her use of the scalpel, finely judged, quick and accurate.
As Trumpeter says, she is anti-abortion on demand, which strikes a chord with me, too. Of course she's deliberately provocative. She's intelligent and astute. She doesn't get these overheated reactions in error.
In these negative, foolish comments above, I have not detected 1/1000th the wit or gift of articulacy that Ann Coulter writes with.
Iain, you know very well that American politics are not mirror image of vapid, wishy-washy British politics. On the other hand, I perfectly understand how anyone who thinks David Cameron is a Conservative would think Ann Coulter is a zealot. Actually, she's a real Conservative and David Cameron is a euro-weenie on the Swedish model. The lack of passion of any kind in British/Euro politics - for they are all one now - makes everyone else look too vivid for delicate eyes long accustomed to only shades of grey.
Yes, Ann has a serious need for attention, which leads her to be wildly provocative.
But...that doesn't speak to the fitness of McCain one way or the other. In my view, McCain is as incompetent in statesmanship as he was brave in combat. The man should've stayed in the Navy.
He will lose to Hillary or Obama, there's just no way around it. It's 1992 all over again...
Verity, the fact that I have liberal views doesn't mean that I creep around being politically correct. Most liberals don't, contrary to what the Daily Hate Mail and its readers would have you think.
Additionally, Coulter has said far nastier things than I am capable of. One thinks of her reference to Bill Clinton as a "latent homosexual". Fascinating.
I was amused by the fact that one of the villains in The Golden Compass is called Mrs. Coulter. Also, the fact that The Magisterium is so obviously the Church of Rome made it all the better.
I have no idea what 'The Golden Compass' is, nor 'The Majesterium'.
And what you wrote about Ann Coulter and Melanie Phillips has nothing to do with their talent as thinkers and writers. You wrote: "I've devised a theory that they should become lovers. Then when they both have what they REALLY want, they won't be so angry and frustrated, and will consequently stop writing such idiocies."
That is very, very vicious. In other words, talented women who hold strong opinions must be lesbians? Care to explain why?
It is a barren and ugly mind that chooses between the lesser of two evils and supports one. Evil is still evil. Now you have embraced evil and made it your own.
Thanks for misrepresenting me, I have no objection at all to talented women who hold strong opinions. I have, for example, a generally positive view of Thatcher. Such criticisms as I make of her have nothing to do with her gender.
I object to Ann Coulter and clinically sane Melanie Phillips because of their laughable ideas, which even the majority of conservatives disown, not because they are female. My view on them is identical to my view on Peter Hitchens, Simon Heffer, Charles Moore, et al. If they were lesbians (which I don't think they are, it's a silly joke that even I don't find funny) I wouldn't care one way or the other.
I'll verify what I say when Ann Coulter provides evidence for her assertion that Bill Clinton is a homosexual. And not before.
Coulter's turned into a nasty piece of work. To think she was the inspiration for the divine Ainsley Hayes.......
Ann Coulter makes Hitler look like a moderate. I've supported McCain from the start, and he is the man I will be sticking with.
Asquith - "If they were lesbians (which I don't think they are, it's a silly joke that even I don't find funny)" - it was an impertinent "joke" built on an impertinent assumption. Yet you thought it worthwhile keying into a blog. You thought it worthwhile changing Ann Coulter's name to MANN Coulter - capital letters, yet, in case anyone missed your clever point.
On a TV talk programme, responding to a question about why she had said there was a level of "latent homosexuality" about Clinton, Coulter responded: "Everyone has always known, widely promiscuous heterosexual men have, as I say, a whiff of the bathhouse about them."
It's a great line.
And actually, true in many instances. And she was gracious enough to say she was just kidding about Al Gore.
In addition, one doesn't have to be as astute as Ann Coulter to see that McCain would make a bloody awful president.
This is not to denigrate his service record in any way. But a different set of emotional and intellectual qualifications are required for being the chief executive of the biggest economy and the most powerful country in the history of humankind.
Sea Shanty Irish here:
Ann Coulter is all about self promotion. The only reason she issues assine statements ("perfect the Jews"; "vote for Hillary') every other month of so, is for shock appeal, to boost her flagging publicity.
Ignore her and she'll go away.
Sea Shanty Irish - There is more than a whiff of self-promotion about you, as well, although I'm relieved to see that you've dropped the stage Irish accent.
Where you differ from Ann Coulter is, she is an entertaining widely read professional columnist and is an instantly recognisable name in the Anglosphere. And you're not.
She doesn't "issue assinine statements" by the way. She's not a press officer. She writes lucid, astute and sometimes very funny, political articles.
I'll never forget her appearance on Newsnight when she made an omelette of Jeremy Paxman. And all without flicking a finger. Most entertaining.
Sea Shanty Irish here:
Dear Lady,
Didn't you get the memo?
Pitt bull conservatism is out, happy warrior conservatism is in.
Note that none of the GOP presidential hopefuls this year chewed the carpet or did the angry "man bites dog" rightwing schtick.
Unless you're counting Alan Keyes, and few do. Though in fact he's on my absentee ballot for the WA presidential preference primary Feb 19.
Most favorable reviews have gone to the LEAST angry of the GOP: Ron Paul,Mike Huckabee and John McCain.
Hey Iain, you still coming to DC for Super Tuesday? Nearby Delaware is starting to look like an interesting state in both racess.
Ann Coulter is an extremist.
I support the Republicans, no doubt about that, but if Coulter had been representative for the Party I would have supported Hillary or Obama.
I hope Iain won't mind, but as we don't have to pay for bandwidth these days, I thought I'd run the exchange between Ann Coulter and interrogator Chris Matthews:
MATTHEWS: Let me ask you about your private life. How do you know that Bill Clinton's gay?
COULTER: He may not be gay, but Al Gore, total fag. No, I'm just kidding. As someone, no --
MATTHEWS: That's based on your private life?
COULTER: No, that's a joke.
MATTHEWS: OK.
COULTER: That's what we call in the writing business, a joke. No, I mean, I state a manifestly obvious fact. Someone pointed out on Free Republic, I think a little disgruntled yesterday, Ann's amazing capacity is to state the obvious and make it news. I mean, everyone has always known, widely promiscuous heterosexual men have, as I say, a whiff of the bathhouse about them.
MATTHEWS: But, you know, you were on -- I was watching you on Deutsch [CNBC's The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch] last night. I watched it because it was all over the blog sites, you can't miss it.
COULTER: Yes!
MATTHEWS: You were immortal in that interview by the way. And you said it because you were sort of pushed to say it. I just wonder if you believe it.
COULTER This is standard --
MATTHEWS: It's a joke. It's a joke.
COULTER I -- I --
MATTHEWS: It's not a joke.
COULTER It's not only not a joke, it's not even surprising. If feminists were not so in love with Bill Clinton, this is like standard --
MATTHEWS: OK.
COULTER For any feminist with the benefit of something beyond a community-college education, this is standard --
MATTHEWS: OK.
COULTER -- feminist doctrine that wild promiscuity shows a fear-hostility of women.
MATTHEWS: Well, thanks, Ann. You're great.
[...]
MATTHEWS: Thank you, Ann.
COULTER: Thank you.
MATTHEWS: Thanks for coming on. And a smart lady. Her book's called Godless. Sometimes being smart isn't enough for a civil discourse. We'd love to have her back.
...................
Tee hee.
Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin are locked in a room with only a typewriter and a sheet of A4.
Who wins the fight to author the most bilious text between them?
Ann Coulter must be one of the ugliest humans alive.
MU: Typewriter, darling? A4? How cute!
Why not two computers and only one plug? My money would be on Ann, because she's tall and has a longer reach. On the other hand, Michelle's scrappy.
To be honest, though, the comparison isn't apt, because Coulter writes primarily about American issues and American politics and Malkin writes about the dangers of islam in the West.
Both very, very fine writers.
Anon @ 4.03PM:
William F. Buckley is a "proper conservative" - and he can also write well, construct a coherent fact-based argument and called Gore Vidal a fag with a little patrician elan. Coulter, on the other hand, is little more than the love child of Michael Moore and Paris Hilton.
If Coulter and her raving little Ann-droids are the answer, I suspect the question is 'why is the GOP an unamusing joke that stopped being a real conservative party years ago'.
dadge said: "Ann Coulter must be one of the ugliest humans alive."
Uglier than someone whose face was burned on the London tube bombings by islamic nutjobs?
Uglier than Robert Mugabe? Uglier than Chavez?
Uglier than Margaret Becket? Uglier than Tony Blair? Uglier than the killers of that headmaster who are now scampering out of prison to begin "new lives" and are threatening his widow? Uglier than the Speaker of the HoC? Uglier than the people who assassinated Benazir Bhutto?
On the scale of ugliness, could you get back to us?
Also, could you let us know how ugliness, or your perception of it, impacts on the intelligence of that person? You seem to be very angry.
Gee, for once I have to thank Verity for something. That typically sycophantic interview from 'Softball' reminded me of another aspect of Coulter's ugly hypocrisy.
When she drops the f-bomb it's just a big joke, a schoolyard taunt and the politically correct ninnies just need to harden up.
Of course, it's straight into outraged victim of liberal intolerance mode when the 'fags' return fire with equally idiotic invective. (You know, like a right-wing Dixie Chick going on a long press tour and every talk show in creation to whine about her dissent being crushed.) I'll go light on the quotes, as even our host has limits. But Coulter seemed to find 'ugly drag queen' particularly hurtful. Call your office, Dr. Freud.
Verity... top stuff! Hang in there. I enjoy Ann Coulter's writings. She says what in the UK is currently unsayable by reason of PC-ness, and which will become unsayable in the US too if the Libs have their way.
From her most recent post... At least under President Hillary, Republicans in Congress would know that they're supposed to fight back. When President McCain proposes the same ideas -- tax hikes, liberal judges and Social Security for illegals -- Republicans in Congress will support "our" president -- just as they supported, if only briefly, Bush's great ideas on amnesty and Harriet Miers.
That sounds right on the money to me.
What a surprise. Pea-brained leftoids don't like and can't handle truth so their only response is abuse. Sexist abuse at that.
I see Coulter's book is called "Godless".
Must be an autobiography...
Rush Is Right - The UK has become so cowed by the Thought Fascists, given special, overweening, powers by Tony Blair, that there an Ann Coulter - astute, clear-headed, deadly - would not be able to find a market. The closest is Melanie Phillips, who, canny and articulate though she most assuredly is, doesn't have the deadly bullet of humour. And even then, the left, working itself up into a lather of what they profess to disdain - 'judgementalism' - tries to shout her down. Not with arguments, but with noise. To try to deprive her of her right to free thought and free speech.
This behaviour simply wouldn't be tolerated by American commentators - by which I mean, the body of communicators of all shades. The Americans just don't believe in shutting people up. They just don't believe in shouting louder. They don't like bullying. They like argument, and the national names are very sharp indeed. In Britain, the bullies get a medal for "caring so much" about whichever social problem Melanie has attacked.
Britain is reduced to nursery terms of "caring" and "being nice".
Give me the bracing zing in the American air. And Ann Coulter has made her millions because she is almost always right. She cleverly - everything this gal does is clever - folded the feminists of the last 30 years up and put them in an envelope when she noted during her Bill Clinton outing that it has been a pillar of feminist received wisdom for 30 years that any serial philanderer is actually gay and is fighting it.
When she said it about Clinton, they couldn't fight her back because they've been hammering it into the public mind for the past 30 years, and when she lanced their hero, Bill, with it, they stood there with their mouths hanging open.
Ha ha ha ha ha! She also made chopped liver of Jeremy Paxman who screwed his face up into inquisitorial mode to no avail as she calmly ran him through the slicer. Damn, she's quick! It was wonderful.
Ian said: "If Ann Coulter's Against McCain That's a Good Reason to Support Him"
A "B minus" for logic, Ian. If someone is worth supporting, there must be positive reasons.
I agree that in the UK, Hillary or Obama could easily be at home in the Conservative Party. They are in favour of high state spending, a nationalised health service and gun prohibition. Where do they differ from the Conservative front bench?
It would be nice to have a Conservative Party in this country, we seem to have a party that uses the name but is frightened of the policies.
She stuffed Paxo:
http://www.order-order.com/2006/06/coulter-v-paxman_21.html
"Some bloggers felt Coulter beat Paxman. I prefer to think that in this electric encounter TV was the winner."
Peter Barron is editor of Newsnight
BBC Bias Translation : Coulter beat Paxman.
4:59 - Thank you.
On this second viewing, I was struck by Paxman's provincial belief that Ann Coulter, or American Republicans at large, give a rat's arse what he thinks or the people in Britain think. "Over here," he opined importantly, "people say that's just nonsense." Coulter didn't look too impressed. She hadn't even bothered to fly "over here" for the interview.
She practised law in NYC,she worked for the Senate Judiciary Committee, she was a litigator for the Center for Individual Rights in DC, she clerked for a justice in the United States Court of Appeals.
I liked it when she told him to stop asking her if she "really believed" something in her book. "I believe everything I wrote, so you can take that as a given. If I wrote it, I believe it."
Well knock me down with a feather !
Verity is a fan of Ann Coulter !
Now there's a surprise...or maybe they are 'one and the same' - What a terrifying thought...
big V. Coulter, like to a lesser extent Melanie Philipps, has a unique selling point that she will say things that no one expects "from a woman" and in that sense good on her for proving that women can be as offensively right-wing (and left-wing for that matter) as men can. I am sure when the history of 21st century feminism is written that will be considered to be a great leap forward.
I may have a wiff of the bath-house (never been in one myself but no prob with privately minded adults who do) but she stinks of the stuff that goes down the plughole.
She's missing two things - a sense of humanity and a male member. Guess which one she'd pick if she had the choice?
Troll Patrol writes: "She's missing two things - a sense of humanity and a male member."
You poor, poor little man! Freud has been discredited for around 50 years! No professional psychiatrist or psychologist these days gives more than a dismissive chuckle at the theory these days. You poor little chap! Didn't you hear the news?
BTW, this neediness is consonant with your attempting to diminish my blog name. My blog name is Verity. You are not free to edit it or amend it.
irony aint your strong point is it Big V. The only Freud I am in absolute love with's works is Lucien Freud, his son, the painter. He is one of the great 4 British artists of the 20th century. Moore, Freud, Bacon and Caro. I wonder, Big V., whether you know any of their art?
In the few interviews I've seen Coulter participate in, she struck me as a breath of fresh air.
A non-PC conservative (akin to the antichrist in media circles), quite happy to stick to her guns and piss off the interviewer.
I wish we had a lot more like her over here.
Her interview with the cod-faced Paxo was pure class - she turned the tables and made him look pretty stupid.
Good for her!
Ann Coulter – anorexic, frigid, cross dressing, post-op transexual, face of the Taliban wing of the Republican Party, once played `Cousin It' on the Munsters between 1964 and 1966. Coulter was once employed by Cribs for Dead and Crippled Kids Casket Company where she modeled and tested up-scale children's caskets for their acoustic soundness and the integrity of their hermetic seals.
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