http://salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/02/21/libertarianism
Sunday, Feb 21, 2010
The GOP's "small government" tea party fraud
By Glenn Greenwald
There's a major political fraud underway: the GOP is once again donning their libertarian, limited-government masks in order to re-invent itself and, more important, to co-opt the energy and passion of the Ron-Paul-faction that spawned and sustains the "tea party" movement. The Party that spat contempt at Paul during the Bush years and was diametrically opposed to most of his platform now pretends to share his views. Standard-issue Republicans and Ron Paul libertarians are as incompatible as two factions can be -- recall that the most celebrated right-wing moment of the 2008 presidential campaign was when Rudy Giuliani all but accused Paul of being an America-hating Terrorist-lover for daring to suggest that America's conduct might contribute to Islamic radicalism -- yet the Republicans, aided by the media, are pretending that this is one unified, harmonious, "small government" political movement.
The Right is petrified that this fraud will be exposed and is thus bending over backwards to sustain the myth. Paul was not only invited to be a featured speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference but also won its presidential straw poll. Sarah Palin endorsed Ron Paul's son in the Kentucky Senate race. National Review is lavishly praising Paul, while Ann Coulter "felt compelled [in her CPAC speech] to give a shout out to Paul-mania, saying she agreed with everything he stands for outside of foreign policy -- a statement met with cheers." Glenn Beck -- who literally cheered for the Wall Street bailout and Bush's endlessly expanding surveillance state -- now parades around as though he shares the libertarians' contempt for them. Red State's Erick Erickson, defending the new so-called conservative "manifesto," touts the need for Congress to be confined to the express powers of Article I, Section 8, all while lauding a GOP Congress that supported countless intrusive laws -- from federalized restrictions on assisted suicide, marriage, gambling, abortion and drugs to intervention in Terri Schiavo's end-of-life state court proceeding -- nowhere to be found in that Constitutional clause. With the GOP out of power, Fox News suddenly started featuring anti-government libertarians such as John Stossel and Reason Magazine commentators, whereas, when Bush was in power, there was no government power too expanded or limitless for Fox propagandists to praise.
This is what Republicans always do. When in power, they massively expand the power of the state in every realm. Deficit spending and the national debt skyrocket. The National Security State is bloated beyond description through wars and occupations, while no limits are tolerated on the Surveillance State. Then, when out of power, they suddenly pretend to re-discover their "small government principles." The very same Republicans who spent the 1990s vehemently opposing Bill Clinton's Terrorism-justified attempts to expand government surveillance and executive authority then, once in power, presided over the largest expansion in history of those very same powers. The last eight years of Republican rule was characterized by nothing other than endlessly expanded government power, even as they insisted -- both before they were empowered and again now -- that they are the standard-bearers of government restraint.
What makes this deceit particularly urgent for them now is that their only hope for re-branding and re-empowerment lies in a movement -- the tea partiers -- that has been (largely though not exclusively) dominated by libertarians, Paul followers, and other assorted idiosyncratic factions who are hostile to the GOP's actual approach to governing. This is a huge wedge waiting to be exposed -- to explode -- as the modern GOP establishment and the actual "small-government" libertarians that fuel the tea party are fundamentally incompatible. Right-wing mavens like Ann Coulter, Sarah Palin and National Review are suddenly feigning great respect for Ron Paul and like-minded activists because they're eager that the sham will be maintained: the blatant sham that the modern GOP and its movement conservatives are a coherent vehicle for those who believe in small government principles. The only evidence of a passionate movement urging GOP resurgence is from people whose views are antithetical to that Party. That's the dirty secret which right-wing polemicists are desperately trying to keep suppressed. Credit to Mike Huckabee for acknowledging this core incompatibility by saying he would not attend CPAC because of its "increasing libertarianism."
These fault lines began to emerge when Sarah Palin earlier this month delivered the keynote speech to the national tea party conference in Nashville, and stood there spitting out one platitude after the next which Paul-led libertarians despise: from neoconservative war-loving dogma and veneration of Israel to glorification of "War on Terror" domestic powers and the need of the state to enforce Palin's own religious and cultural values. Neocons (who still overwhelmingly dominate the GOP) and Paul-led libertarians are arch enemies, and the social conservatives on whom the GOP depends are barely viewed with greater affection. Sarah Palin and Ron Paul are about as far apart on most issues as one can get; the "tea party movement" can't possibly be about supporting each of their worldviews. Moreover, the GOP leadership is currently promising Wall Street even more loyal subservience than Democrats have given in exchange for support, thus bolstering the government/corporate axis which libertarians find so repugnant. And Coulter's manipulative claim that she "agrees with everything [Paul] stands for outside of foreign policy" is laughable; aside from the fact that "foreign policy" is a rather large issue in our political debates (Iraq, Israel, Afghanistan, Iran, Russia), they were on exactly the opposite sides of the most intense domestic controversies of the Bush era: torture, military commissions, habeas corpus, Guantanamo, CIA secrecy, telecom immunity, and warrantless eavesdropping.
Part of why this fraud has been sustainable thus far is that libertarians -- like everyone who doesn't view all politics through the mandated, distorting, suffocating Democrat v. GOP prism -- are typically dismissed as loons and nuts, and are thus eager for any means of achieving mainstream acceptance. Having the GOP embrace them is one way to achieve that (Karl Rove: some "see the tea party movement as a recruiting pool for volunteers for Ron Paul's next presidential bid . . . . The Republican Party and the tea party movement have many common interests"). Additionally, just as the Paul-faction of libertarians is in basic harmony with many progressives on issues of foreign policy and civil liberties, they do subscribe to the standard GOP rhetoric on domestic spending, social programs and the like.
But that GOP limited government rhetoric is simply never matched by that Party's conduct, especially when they wield power. The very idea that a political party dominated by neocons, warmongers, surveillance fetishists, and privacy-hating social conservatives will be a party of "limited government" is absurd on its face. There literally is no myth more transparent than the Republican Party's claim to believe in restrained government power. For that reason, it's only a matter of time before the fundamental incompatibility of the "tea party movement" and the political party cynically exploiting it is exposed.
Showing posts with label Ann Coulter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ann Coulter. Show all posts
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Friday, February 27, 2009
FIAT FOOLISHNESS
FIAT FOOLISHNESS
by Kenn Thomas
steamshovelpress.com
It started out as an interesting week for parapolitics: the son of Louis Jolyon West wrote an article on the assisted suicide of the famous CIA-MKULTRA scientist and Francis O’Neill, one of the FBI agents who remarked on “surgery to the head area” in a report of JFK’s wounds that led to David Lifton’s Best Evidence theory of body alteration, died. I circulated these stories on various conspiracy discussion lists and figured it would lead to some provocative feedback.
Jolyon West had been well-known for his association with mind control, dating to the time when he headed the psychiatry department at Lackland Air base and the US discovered many of its shot-down fighter pilots brainwashed by the North Koreans. (see: “Bug Bombs,” in the first volume of Cyberculture Counterconspiracy.) West also killed a bull elephant once by mis-administering LSD to it. He developed plans to for human experimentation as part of a Reagan-supported “anti-violence” center.
Oddly, even as Francis X. O’Neil’s obituary hit the web, so did a feature on retired Secret Service agent Dale Wunderlich, of the 11/22/63 secret service security detail, from Longmont Times-Call in Colorado. Wunderlich gave a Rotary Club talk trying to make a case for the lone nut theory. “The sight of Kennedy’s body, face down in the hospital, is still engraved on Wunderlich’s mind,” according to the article. Fruitless book and net searches for such an image--JFK’s body face down—added some weight to Wunderlich’s own statement that “I had such tears in my eyes that I couldn’t see anything.” Those not inclined to regard Wunderlich as carrying on a decades-long mythology that few really believe may have taken the kinder view that Wunderlich sees only what he wants to see about this momentous event in his life.`
That’s about where any thoughtful reflection on these parapolitical footnotes went. The lists instead got clogged with things like another poorly written Ann Coulter rant against the “fiat money” that Barack Obama plans to print up to fund the stimulus program. Coulter doesn’t disguise her role as a narrow minded and barely literate ideologue. Her readers and critics hear no complaints from her when the government starts over-printing fiat money for the sake of the military, which does as much to deplete currency value as anything. So her criticisms remain select and transparent even as her writing style shows her up as—challenged. (Christopher Hitchens has great fun with this.) I had a girlfriend once who labeled Coulter one of the "dumb blondes for Bush." The other was Barbara Olson, who died on one of the 9/11 planes. Olson’s tragic death didn't improve her arguments any which often fell along the lines of Coulter’s aping the hypocritical old "less government" bull. She supports only a shift in big government spending, not a reduction. It’s a fairly obvious false dialogue. I would have greatly preferred a discussion of things of more historical weight, like the stories of people like West and O’Neill.
Conspiracy critics do themselves a disservice by ever alluding to any of these mainstream pundits. If you have a point to make, make it yourself. Coulter and Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and all those others making similar points—often gleaned from the very online conspiracy sources they say they eschew--are at best like a broken clock, right twice daily, if then. They serve the agenda most students of parapolitics claim they oppose. Their political heroes (Reagan, Bush) have time and again advanced the practice of issuing exorbitant “fiat money” far more than anyone. The TV pundits are about shifting the priorities to which the money is applied. They didn't say a word when Bush's Wall Street buddies, the courtesans of his monarchy, raided the treasury during his last weeks in office. It's only the threat that Obama wants to spend on social programs that's put a bee in their bonnet now. They could give a damn about fiat money, as they always support it for corporate welfare and when the military budget expands. All are welcome to take whatever side they want on the spectrum, of course, but all also, at least when it comes to the endeavor to understand conspiracy, must acknowledge the process of false dialogue and media brainwash. Talking about West, O’Neil and Wunderlich would have been a much more enlightening path to this understanding.
Videos by Geert Wilders have made the rounds of late as well and offer a similar lesson. He’s a right wing Dutch politician who fattens his own political fortunes by very publicly opposing the spread of jihadist Islamic culture in Europe. Wilders is at least as right about that as “conservative” “right” or whatever media is about “fiat money”, but does anyone have to support the right in the Netherlands to agree with him? Of course not. They can, in fact, oppose Wilders and the jihadists at the same time. One long-time list manager even circulated material that literally came from a neo-Nazi group in the UK because it has the same anti-jihad message! This is exactly where the false dialogue leads, islamo-fascists on one side; neo-nazis on the other. It’s not an issue of blaming the messenger. These "messengers" are the same people the conspiracy critical world has always opposed.
As for JFK and the Federal Reserve: he issued silver certificates in smaller denominations in order to help remove them from circulation. The value of the silver used in making coins had become greater than the value of the coins, so Kennedy facilitated the effort to stop using actual silver in minting coins, fully realized in 1965, under Johnson. This was a move clearly in the direction of fiat money, not toward it. The US has been off the gold standard since 1934, so Kennedy was acting in the grand tradition of FDR by doing the same for the silver standard. It's hard to think that Kennedy was shot for this purpose. Whether it’s gold, silver or the goodwill of a cabal of Jewish conspirators, money is what everyone agrees to call money—American GIs used cigarettes as currency in post WWII Germany. It’s supposed to be a consensus reality. The only place where mainstream pundits and the parapolitical underground agree is on the lack of that consensus.
by Kenn Thomas
steamshovelpress.com
It started out as an interesting week for parapolitics: the son of Louis Jolyon West wrote an article on the assisted suicide of the famous CIA-MKULTRA scientist and Francis O’Neill, one of the FBI agents who remarked on “surgery to the head area” in a report of JFK’s wounds that led to David Lifton’s Best Evidence theory of body alteration, died. I circulated these stories on various conspiracy discussion lists and figured it would lead to some provocative feedback.
Jolyon West had been well-known for his association with mind control, dating to the time when he headed the psychiatry department at Lackland Air base and the US discovered many of its shot-down fighter pilots brainwashed by the North Koreans. (see: “Bug Bombs,” in the first volume of Cyberculture Counterconspiracy.) West also killed a bull elephant once by mis-administering LSD to it. He developed plans to for human experimentation as part of a Reagan-supported “anti-violence” center.
Oddly, even as Francis X. O’Neil’s obituary hit the web, so did a feature on retired Secret Service agent Dale Wunderlich, of the 11/22/63 secret service security detail, from Longmont Times-Call in Colorado. Wunderlich gave a Rotary Club talk trying to make a case for the lone nut theory. “The sight of Kennedy’s body, face down in the hospital, is still engraved on Wunderlich’s mind,” according to the article. Fruitless book and net searches for such an image--JFK’s body face down—added some weight to Wunderlich’s own statement that “I had such tears in my eyes that I couldn’t see anything.” Those not inclined to regard Wunderlich as carrying on a decades-long mythology that few really believe may have taken the kinder view that Wunderlich sees only what he wants to see about this momentous event in his life.`
That’s about where any thoughtful reflection on these parapolitical footnotes went. The lists instead got clogged with things like another poorly written Ann Coulter rant against the “fiat money” that Barack Obama plans to print up to fund the stimulus program. Coulter doesn’t disguise her role as a narrow minded and barely literate ideologue. Her readers and critics hear no complaints from her when the government starts over-printing fiat money for the sake of the military, which does as much to deplete currency value as anything. So her criticisms remain select and transparent even as her writing style shows her up as—challenged. (Christopher Hitchens has great fun with this.) I had a girlfriend once who labeled Coulter one of the "dumb blondes for Bush." The other was Barbara Olson, who died on one of the 9/11 planes. Olson’s tragic death didn't improve her arguments any which often fell along the lines of Coulter’s aping the hypocritical old "less government" bull. She supports only a shift in big government spending, not a reduction. It’s a fairly obvious false dialogue. I would have greatly preferred a discussion of things of more historical weight, like the stories of people like West and O’Neill.
Conspiracy critics do themselves a disservice by ever alluding to any of these mainstream pundits. If you have a point to make, make it yourself. Coulter and Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and all those others making similar points—often gleaned from the very online conspiracy sources they say they eschew--are at best like a broken clock, right twice daily, if then. They serve the agenda most students of parapolitics claim they oppose. Their political heroes (Reagan, Bush) have time and again advanced the practice of issuing exorbitant “fiat money” far more than anyone. The TV pundits are about shifting the priorities to which the money is applied. They didn't say a word when Bush's Wall Street buddies, the courtesans of his monarchy, raided the treasury during his last weeks in office. It's only the threat that Obama wants to spend on social programs that's put a bee in their bonnet now. They could give a damn about fiat money, as they always support it for corporate welfare and when the military budget expands. All are welcome to take whatever side they want on the spectrum, of course, but all also, at least when it comes to the endeavor to understand conspiracy, must acknowledge the process of false dialogue and media brainwash. Talking about West, O’Neil and Wunderlich would have been a much more enlightening path to this understanding.
Videos by Geert Wilders have made the rounds of late as well and offer a similar lesson. He’s a right wing Dutch politician who fattens his own political fortunes by very publicly opposing the spread of jihadist Islamic culture in Europe. Wilders is at least as right about that as “conservative” “right” or whatever media is about “fiat money”, but does anyone have to support the right in the Netherlands to agree with him? Of course not. They can, in fact, oppose Wilders and the jihadists at the same time. One long-time list manager even circulated material that literally came from a neo-Nazi group in the UK because it has the same anti-jihad message! This is exactly where the false dialogue leads, islamo-fascists on one side; neo-nazis on the other. It’s not an issue of blaming the messenger. These "messengers" are the same people the conspiracy critical world has always opposed.
As for JFK and the Federal Reserve: he issued silver certificates in smaller denominations in order to help remove them from circulation. The value of the silver used in making coins had become greater than the value of the coins, so Kennedy facilitated the effort to stop using actual silver in minting coins, fully realized in 1965, under Johnson. This was a move clearly in the direction of fiat money, not toward it. The US has been off the gold standard since 1934, so Kennedy was acting in the grand tradition of FDR by doing the same for the silver standard. It's hard to think that Kennedy was shot for this purpose. Whether it’s gold, silver or the goodwill of a cabal of Jewish conspirators, money is what everyone agrees to call money—American GIs used cigarettes as currency in post WWII Germany. It’s supposed to be a consensus reality. The only place where mainstream pundits and the parapolitical underground agree is on the lack of that consensus.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Jonah Goldberg: Media Putz
http://mediaputz.com/08/03/putz0313.html
Honoring reporters who just can't handle the truth!
March 13, 2008
Jonah Goldberg
For reporting that is an embarrassment to the profession of journalism, and for being beholden to corporate paymasters rather than the citizens of America.
Too bad Lucianne Goldberg reached her zenith of infamy during the Clinton impeachment, because she would make a terrific BuzzFlash Media Putz recipient. But we can rectify that by recognizing the ongoing and significant contributions to the degradation of journalism made by her son, Jonah Goldberg.
His pedigree of Putzdom is unchallengeable. Just consider his recollection of his role in the pass-off of dirty linen from Monica Lewinsky to Linda Tripp to his Mom to Drudge to Ken Starr:
My mother was the one who advised Linda Tripp to record her conversations with Monica Lewinsky and to save the dress. I was privy to some of that stuff, and when the administration set about to destroy Lewinsky, Tripp, and my mom, I defended my mom and by extension Tripp... I have zero desire to have those arguments again. I did my bit in the trenches of Clinton's trousers.
Employed by the National Review Online, Jonah is one of those right-wing media shills who resides somewhere between Ann Coulter and David Brooks. You just don't know which side of him is going to show up at any given time when he regularly appears on the television "news analysis" programs or in his writings.
Take, for instance, his recent book whose title owes much to the Coulter school of sensational language: "Liberal Fascism." Its subtitle is "The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning." There's one of those annoying smiley faces on the bright red front cover, except this one has a Hitler moustache. Okay, was Jonah tripping when he came up with this book, or just drunk?
Because it just doesn't make any sense. I don't think anyone ever heard the words liberal and fascism attached before, let alone Mussolini included in a secret leftist history of America. That must have been some blotter acid Jonah, eh?
As a right-winger, you know that you have a problem on your hand when the "American Conservative" pans your tome: "Liberal Fascism reads less like an extended argument than as a catalogue of conservative intellectual clichés, often irrelevant to the supposed point of the book."
In the American Conservative article from January 28, 2007, the first paragraph gets to the heart of the absurdity of Goldberg's concept of "liberal fascism": "Not without reason was Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism widely expected to be a bad book. As many predicted from the title, Goldberg does not content himself with rebuking those who call anyone who disagrees with them a fascist. Instead, he invents reasons of his own for calling anyone who disagrees with Jonah Goldberg a fascist. Liberal Fascism confirms anew George Orwell's remark -- cited by Goldberg without irony -- that fascism has no meaning today other than 'something not desirable.'"
Robert Morse of Indianapolis, Indiana, nominated Jonah Goldberg as the BuzzFlash Media Putz of the Week for connecting Hitler to liberals. In fact, Goldberg contends Hitler was a liberal.
Next time you see Jonah peddling his "views" on television, remember that he's living proof that the more you don't make sense, the higher your value rises in the right-wing punditsphere. "Right-Wing Fascism" would have made too much sense as a title, but then again Goldberg appears to specialize in fiction.
Honoring reporters who just can't handle the truth!
March 13, 2008
Jonah Goldberg
For reporting that is an embarrassment to the profession of journalism, and for being beholden to corporate paymasters rather than the citizens of America.
Too bad Lucianne Goldberg reached her zenith of infamy during the Clinton impeachment, because she would make a terrific BuzzFlash Media Putz recipient. But we can rectify that by recognizing the ongoing and significant contributions to the degradation of journalism made by her son, Jonah Goldberg.
His pedigree of Putzdom is unchallengeable. Just consider his recollection of his role in the pass-off of dirty linen from Monica Lewinsky to Linda Tripp to his Mom to Drudge to Ken Starr:
My mother was the one who advised Linda Tripp to record her conversations with Monica Lewinsky and to save the dress. I was privy to some of that stuff, and when the administration set about to destroy Lewinsky, Tripp, and my mom, I defended my mom and by extension Tripp... I have zero desire to have those arguments again. I did my bit in the trenches of Clinton's trousers.
Employed by the National Review Online, Jonah is one of those right-wing media shills who resides somewhere between Ann Coulter and David Brooks. You just don't know which side of him is going to show up at any given time when he regularly appears on the television "news analysis" programs or in his writings.
Take, for instance, his recent book whose title owes much to the Coulter school of sensational language: "Liberal Fascism." Its subtitle is "The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning." There's one of those annoying smiley faces on the bright red front cover, except this one has a Hitler moustache. Okay, was Jonah tripping when he came up with this book, or just drunk?
Because it just doesn't make any sense. I don't think anyone ever heard the words liberal and fascism attached before, let alone Mussolini included in a secret leftist history of America. That must have been some blotter acid Jonah, eh?
As a right-winger, you know that you have a problem on your hand when the "American Conservative" pans your tome: "Liberal Fascism reads less like an extended argument than as a catalogue of conservative intellectual clichés, often irrelevant to the supposed point of the book."
In the American Conservative article from January 28, 2007, the first paragraph gets to the heart of the absurdity of Goldberg's concept of "liberal fascism": "Not without reason was Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism widely expected to be a bad book. As many predicted from the title, Goldberg does not content himself with rebuking those who call anyone who disagrees with them a fascist. Instead, he invents reasons of his own for calling anyone who disagrees with Jonah Goldberg a fascist. Liberal Fascism confirms anew George Orwell's remark -- cited by Goldberg without irony -- that fascism has no meaning today other than 'something not desirable.'"
Robert Morse of Indianapolis, Indiana, nominated Jonah Goldberg as the BuzzFlash Media Putz of the Week for connecting Hitler to liberals. In fact, Goldberg contends Hitler was a liberal.
Next time you see Jonah peddling his "views" on television, remember that he's living proof that the more you don't make sense, the higher your value rises in the right-wing punditsphere. "Right-Wing Fascism" would have made too much sense as a title, but then again Goldberg appears to specialize in fiction.
Friday, February 22, 2008
So Much for a Warm Welcome
http://www.newsweek.com/id/109695
So Much for a Warm Welcome
John McCain is the presumptive GOP nominee for president. In the face of serious opposition, his campaign is reaching out to movement leaders and trying to make nice.
By Eve Conant, Holly Bailey and Michael Hirsh
NEWSWEEK
Feb 9, 2008
Ann Coulter has made controversy her currency, outrage her oeuvre. And a lot of currency it is: over the past decade, Coulter's earned a huge amount of money from an unbroken streak of six best sellers, each an angry diatribe against liberals, most featuring her slim blond figure on the cover. Coulter Inc. has helped inspire a cottage industry of imitators, books that all seem designed to feed off the frustrations of the angry right. ("Liberal Fascism," by Jonah Goldberg, is the latest to hit it big.) But Coulter has a subspecialty all her own: uttering remarks so off the charts, so contrary to every norm of civil discourse, that they attract national news coverage. A few months ago she declared on TV that Jews need "to be perfected," and suggested that America would be better off if it were all Christian. Last week Coulter attacked her own party's presumptive nominee. John McCain, Coulter said, was a traitor to conservatives, so much so that she'd campaign for Hillary Clinton if he were nominated. Was there anything the Arizona senator could do, NEWSWEEK e-mailed her later, to change her mind? Would she really stump for Clinton? "I don't know," she wrote. Then she added: "McCain could invent a time machine, travel back in time" and take back all his liberal-leaning votes in Congress. "Short of that," she said, "the only thing that would work is if he put a gun to my head, but since McCain is also against gun rights, that's out." (McCain backed a measure to close a gun-show loophole on background checks, but is otherwise supportive of gun rights.)
As McCain draws closer to the GOP nomination, many leaders of the conservative movement have gone into convulsions. The biggest headline-grabber was Coulter, who, true to form, seemed to set a new low for immoderation. But that didn't stop a slew of other prominent hard-right pundits, most on talk radio, from trying to outrant her. Rush Limbaugh, the most popular right-wing radio host, had been railing against McCain for years, and now declared that if he were nominated, "it's going to destroy the Republican Party." "He's just a lousy senator and a terrible Republican," said Hugh Hewitt, another syndicated talk-show host. "His votes the past seven to 10 years have been on the wrong side of the issues." The revolt went beyond talk radio's political shock jocks. James Dobson, one of the nation's most prominent evangelical Christian leaders, declared he could not "in good conscience" vote for McCain and endorsed Mike Huckabee—the first time Dobson had ever taken sides in a GOP primary.
Other right-wing pundits counterattacked in what has become a case of a party's base bringing chaos out of order. Bill Bennett, the onetime drug czar and conservative Washington pundit who now has his own show, asked his fellow radio hosts to tone things down. "Who is he to say that?" retorted one of them, Michael Savage, who sometimes rivals Coulter in controversy. "He's got a minuscule audience and no credibility. If he wants to start some internecine war, then here we go: he's a blowhard." The uncivil war also pulled in some stalwarts of the GOP "base," such as Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. "Rush is even ranting against me," Land tells NEWSWEEK. "I had the temerity to challenge the Great One in his all-knowing wisdom. Rush is underestimating the ability of Hillary or [Barack] Obama to unite conservatives around McCain. Rush says on air, 'Dr. Land, I'll tell you, I talk to 20 million people a day.' No he doesn't. He talks at 20 million people a day." (Limbaugh declined NEWSWEEK's interview request.) Does the Limbaughian view matter, really? The numbers suggest an apparent gap between the movement's leaders and rank-and-file conservatives. In the new NEWSWEEK Poll, McCain holds a marginal lead among conservatives (49 to 43 percent) in a showdown with Huckabee. Seventy-six percent of all GOP voters and 69 percent of self-described conservatives say they would be satisfied with McCain as the GOP nominee. However, on Saturday, the first test since McCain became the presumptive nominee, Huckabee trounced McCain in the Kansas caucus, winning around 60 percent of the vote.
As the country learned anew in 2000 and 2004, every vote counts—especially every vote in states (like Ohio) where the margin of victory in a general election is likely to be narrow. If even a handful of conservatives were to follow the Limbaugh-Coulter line and stay home, it could make a real difference. McCain knows that, which is why he is moving to address the trouble to his right. Sens. Tom Coburn and Sam Brownback, widely respected among right-to-lifers, have been contacting prominent social conservatives, including many members of Congress, urging them to take a second look at McCain's record. Former vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp, a hero to fiscal conservatives and a frequent guest on Limbaugh's show, tells NEWSWEEK he "just finished a first draft of an open letter to Sean [Hannity] and Rush and Laura [Ingraham] and the other conservative talk-show hosts." Former senator Phil Gramm has been tasked with reaching out to lawmakers, as well as activists in the conservative movement. A senior McCain adviser, who didn't want to be named discussing internal strategy, says that Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of McCain's closest allies in the Senate, made a direct appeal last week to Hannity, the radio and TV host, who has railed against McCain in recent weeks. Meanwhile, that McCain adviser, and another who didn't want to be named for the same reason, confirm to NEWSWEEK that there has been tentative outreach to Limbaugh—though McCain himself has not been directly involved in that effort.
Reaching out, though, is not pandering. McCain tried that once, and it didn't work; he does not want to try it again. In 2000, he avoided hard questions about whether South Carolinians could fly the Confederate flag over their statehouse by invoking "states' rights"—an approach that backfired when George W. Bush won the primary. (He later reversed himself, saying his earlier decision had been motivated by politics.) He tried early in this campaign to make nice with social conservatives by reaching out to prominent evangelicals such as Jerry Falwell, whom he'd called "agents of intolerance." But his wooing of the right alienated independents and moderates who liked his straight-talk image. By July, his campaign was virtually broke and his candidacy was written off.
Now McCain is "unwilling to bow and kiss the ring" of his antagonists, says one adviser, who didn't want to be named fanning any flames. (Regarding Coulter, another top McCain aide snorts—anonymously, for the same reason—"I don't care what she thinks.") Do their diatribes bother McCain? "I don't listen to them … I've never even met them," McCain says. "I don't even listen to Rush … I'm not a masochist." Asked if it wouldn't make his life simpler to call Dobson and seek common ground, McCain shrugs. "I know what it takes to unite the party," he says. He needs to put that knowledge into action, and fairly soon. It seems possible that the conservative movement—the dominant force in American politics since the Reagan Revolution—has become so dogmatic that it might choose purity over victory.
Conservatives have been here before. Twenty years ago, in 1988, they ultimately coalesced behind George H.W. Bush, who had run as a moderate in 1980 before moving rightward as vice president. Hard-core conservatives were never entirely comfortable with the senior Bush, but, presented with the possibility of a Michael Dukakis presidency, the activists chose to believe that Bush's conservatism was real. The question for them now is whether they will go to McCain's side as they did to Bush's in 1988. (By 1992, the right—including, for a time, Limbaugh—had grown unhappy with Bush, which hurt him in his failed re-election bid, first in the primaries against Pat Buchanan and then in the general against Bill Clinton and Ross Perot.) According to surveys, McCain is competitive in head-to-head match-ups with Clinton and Obama, largely because he appeals to conservative Democrats and independents. Part of his pitch is that he can "reach out" (a phrase that Limbaugh, on his show last week, repeated disgustedly, imitating McCain's voice). Yet Democrats seem far more determined than Republicans to vote this year. They've turned out for primary and caucus voting in far greater numbers, and the new NEWSWEEK Poll shows less enthusiasm among Republican voters for McCain than there is among Democratic voters for Obama and Clinton. McCain can ill afford to continue to alienate an influential chunk of the Republican base if he wants to win. For now, he seems to be depending on aides to mend fences: respected conservatives such as Charlie Black, a former Reagan adviser, are quietly reaching out to critics. He's also counting on some of the anger to be diverted as the campaign shifts toward a battle with the Democrats.
McCain may, in fact, have a better sense of America's shifting political mood than his detractors. "More and more of us are independents," says pollster John Zogby. "More people are not wedded to a party, a candidate or an ideology." Michael Dimock of the Pew Research Center says poll numbers show a small shift away from the GOP. About 34 percent of registered voters identified themselves as independents in 2007, up from about 30 percent in 2006, he says. That's the highest it's been since 1999, and almost all the slippage has been on the Republican side. Many in the Republican Party base, meanwhile, seem to believe it's still the same country it was a political generation ago—their country, in other words. "Conservatives are on the eternal search for a new Reagan," columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote in The Washington Post last Friday. "They refuse to accept that a movement leader who is also a gifted politician is a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon."
The senator's persona is bound up in his ethos of defiance and courage—the witty raconteur of the Straight Talk Express whose penchant for getting in the face of his critics dates back to his days as an antic troublemaker at the Naval Academy. Before his speech last Thursday to the Conservative Political Action Committee in Washington, D.C., McCain told NEWSWEEK that he knew he'd probably be booed. (The admission came with a smile.) Privately, his aides worried about a full-scale walkout from the giant ballroom—or, even worse, people throwing things at the stage. "Tomatoes we are good with," said one McCain adviser, who didn't want to be named making light of a tense situation. "Rocks … not so much. Hopefully, they'll pat those folks down." There were no projectiles, but plenty of hoots, especially when McCain admitted he'd "made mistakes."
The hoots could be a problem. Coulter has a devoted readership, and Limbaugh and his peers have huge, loyal audiences (nearly 14 million at last count for Limbaugh), because they are saying things many conservative Americans want to hear. Gary Bauer, president of American Values, says: "Conservatives have been in a funk for a couple of years now for a variety of reasons, including disappointment over the 2006 elections. But the movement is alive and well, and I, for one, think the best days for conservatives are still ahead. Our philosophy is in tune with most Americans. It's significant that every candidate was trying to outdo the others in appealing to conservative voters." Lee Edwards, a Heritage Foundation historian who studies the conservative movement, agrees. "Most voters still support a limited government, a strong national defense and basic conservative ideas," he says. The reason the Republican nominee this year wasn't more conservative, he believes, is not a reflection of a move to the middle, but the lack of a strong and viable leader of that ilk: Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson were all fatally flawed.
In retrospect, McCain may have been saved by his campaign meltdown last summer, says Grover Norquist, another prominent conservative activist and president of Americans for Tax Reform. "Had he stayed the front runner, the talk-show hosts would have had the opportunity to make a case against him," Norquist says. But they didn't realize he was making a comeback until New Hampshire and South Carolina, and "by the time they tried to make a case, it was too late."
Conservatives have long memories, and plenty of what they recall is painful. In the last decade or so, McCain has sinned mightily against right-wing orthodoxy. He cosponsored the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, which undermined a bedrock GOP belief that money is a form of free speech (and deprived conservative lobbying groups of influence); he joined the Senate's "Gang of 14," which forged a middle ground over the nomination of conservative judges, and he supported a compromise on illegal immigration. "McCain's apostasies are too numerous to count," wrote Krauthammer. "He's held the line on abortion, but on just about everything else he could find—tax cuts, immigration, campaign finance reform, Guantánamo—he not only opposed the conservative consensus but also insisted on doing so with ostentatious self-righteousness."
McCain's rise is the latest in a series of conservative disappointments (news that will surprise the many liberals who think the right has been running the country for seven years). "Conservatives are in open rebellion now," says longtime conservative activist Richard Viguerie. "We've been treated shabbily by Republican establishment politicians. We've been treated like the proverbial country cousins. They'll invite us to the wedding but make us sit in the back. All that Limbaugh, Coulter, Savage and the others are doing is just reflecting what's happening at the grass roots. The Republican Party is in shambles. McCain is trailing among conservatives, and conservatives are the base of the Republican Party. Sure, he's getting the lion's share of moderate and liberal Republicans, but they make up only one third of the Republican vote."
No one knew this better than McCain himself as he strode to the podium of CPAC's annual meeting in the Omni Shoreham Hotel, a gathering that served as ground zero for the right-wing outrage last week. McCain had snubbed this convocation for years. But now the McCainiacs were growing worried that conservative Republicans would not rally on voting day and perhaps stay home. "The Republican Party needs to find its bottom," says conservative talk-show host Glenn Beck. "I'm an alcoholic. I understand what it means to bottom out. When you find your bottom—when you say, 'I can't live like this anymore, I can't live this lie'—that's when Republicans and conservatives will start doing some real soul-searching to determine what their values are."
McCain and his campaign know that the conservative uprising poses serious practical problems as well. A senior McCain aide, who didn't want to be named talking about the campaign's woes, cites the difficulty in fund-raising that the candidate faced a year ago when GOP critics targeted his compromise position on immigration reform. (McCain championed a bill with archliberal Ted Kennedy that would have allowed illegal aliens to participate in a worker-visa program. He later retreated.) Campaign donations quickly dried up—particularly among small donors, whose checks are looked upon as an indication of how much grass-roots support a candidate is getting. Aides privately worry that more barking from McCain's critics could create a similar scenario—a devastating financial blow in an election year when Republicans are already being outspent and outraised by Democrats. "We can get past people bashing us—even [George W.] Bush got some of that," says a McCain adviser, who declined to be named discussing internal strategy. "But if it starts affecting [the money], it's a problem." Coulter tells NEWSWEEK that she herself was "rather surprised at how ferocious and immediate the support was for my preference for Hillary over McCain on the Internet and in my In box. I thought it would take me a few more times at bat to explain my position fully. Oh no, no, no!"
It's no surprise, then, that McCain and his aides worked hard on his CPAC speech, in which he made the case that he was a "proud conservative" and was the only thing standing between conservatism and disaster. It was a direct appeal to the base. "I'm a Republican," McCain said six times in the speech, while his audience often sat on their hands. Despite polite cheers at the end, the crowd was unmoved. Matthew Bixler, a 22-year-old student at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, was one of those booing. "He was just playing to his audience," Bixler says, "talking about making tax cuts permanent that he didn't support in the first place. What kind of straight talk was that? I think he pandered to, if not even manipulated, this crowd." Justin Goins, 20, who also attends Liberty, says: "I just don't know how we could ever trust this man. Aside from being pro-life, he doesn't have much to go on in terms of how he's voted. How great is it that three different people had to come out before his speech and ask people not to boo?"
Still, the Omni Shoreham is not the Hanoi Hilton. John McCain is a man who has survived at least two near-death experiences: once as a prisoner in Vietnam, and a second time last summer, when he found himself abandoned and left for political dead by his party (before managing to revive his campaign almost single handedly). Last Thursday, McCain knew, it was not just he who was being cast aside. His right-wing critics were themselves getting dumped by his once bitter rival, Mitt Romney.
A few hours before McCain's speech, Romney shocked the crowd by saying he was bowing out of the GOP race. In the end, Romney hit on the one reason he knew would appeal: he could not leave the nation to suffer the calamity that a Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama presidency would mean to the War on Terror. At least McCain, the arch-hawk on Iraq, would not allow that to happen. "They would retreat, declare defeat, and the consequences of that would be devastating," Romney told the CPAC gathering as his anguished supporters shouted, "No! no!" "In this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror." To soften up the enemy's defenses, McCain sent in a coterie of conservative allies, like Coburn and former senator George Allen, to make his case. At Friday's CPAC meeting, McCain got what may be the biggest boost of all: an implicit endorsement by President Bush, who, without mentioning McCain by name, told the CPAC faithful: "We have had good debates, and soon we will have a nominee who will carry the conservative banner into this election and beyond."
McCain has been directly involved in getting the endorsements of Allen—who had been supporting Thompson before he dropped out—and Ken Mehlman, the former Republican National Committee head who managed Bush's 2004 re-election campaign. Mehlman, who was previously uncommitted, announced his endorsement of McCain late Thursday. McCain had spoken to both men by phone in recent weeks, hoping to line up their support. A senior McCain aide, who also didn't want to be named discussing internal strategy, tells NEWSWEEK that campaign emissaries also talked to former Senate majority leader Bill Frist, who had been supporting Thompson, and former senator Bob Dole, who has so far declined to endorse anyone in the race, citing his wife's Senate re-election bid in North Carolina. Dole has, however, defended McCain against attacks from Limbaugh.
McCain has also been doing major outreach on judges, reassuring conservatives that he'll deliver what for many of them is a key benefit of a Republican presidency. "I strongly supported John Roberts and Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court," he said in a statement to the Federalist Society. "I would seek men and women like them as my judicial appointees." In the conservative movement, says one GOP strategist who declined to be named while talking about private discussions, McCain's statement is being received as a "read my lips, no more Souters" pledge—a reference to Supreme Court Justice David Souter, who was thought to be a staunch conservative, but revealed more liberal views on the bench.
Even Coulter, whom many conservative politicos privately deride as an attention seeker, says she has been contacted by emissaries she won't identify. "Yes, I won't reveal private communications, but they were friendly on both sides," she says. "Behind the scenes, McCain's people are demanding that TV and radio banish me, so I guess I'm at least as likely to be audited by a McCain administration as a Clinton administration."
One of McCain's secret weapons appears to be Charlie Black, who is widely respected among Washington conservatives. Black had hoped to sit out this contest, but got involved when McCain appealed to him last year to help his troubled campaign. Since then, Black, along with other top McCain staffers, has labored free of charge. He's a regular at Norquist's weekly meetings and was once a board member of the American Conservative Union. Aides say he, along with Gramm, has been coordinating the outreach effort. While no promises have been made, some in McCain's camp have also been suggesting that the candidate's veep choice will go a long way toward assuaging the right, as will Black's likely role as the White House's "new Karl Rove." "Look, we know these people very well," Black tells NEWSWEEK. "A lot of us grew up in the conservative movement. We have a lot of conversations going on with different people."
But just as with his boss, there are times when Black doesn't sound entirely conciliatory. He believes that Limbaugh (whom he says he has known for 20 years) and others won't sit out the election, in spite of their threats. "It doesn't have to be unanimous until [the primary is] over," Black says. "When they understand … there's nothing else [they] can do, it's McCain versus Clinton or Obama, the huge difference will cause them to support McCain."
Even most of McCain's worst critics believe things will calm down. "Samuel Johnson once said that the prospect of hanging concentrates the mind wonderfully," says Hugh Hewitt. "Hillary and Obama are right over the hill; this might not just be a loss in 2008 but an exile for 16 years." Others, like National Review bloggers calling themselves Reaganauts for McCain, call for some perspective, reminding readers that right-wingers have long felt betrayed by the presidents they elect. "The Old GOP Establishment said terrible things, untrue things, about Ronald Reagan," the blog said. "Some in this new Establishment are also saying terrible and untrue things about another maverick conservative, John McCain."
Richard Land says the GOP will, in the end, do what it does best: unite. "I find it hard to believe that there are many conservatives who, when push comes to shove and they contemplate what it would be to have Hillary Clinton with the added pain of Bubba back in the White House, or Obama, that they won't eventually rally behind whoever the Republican nominee is as long as they are pro-life," says Land. "I don't want to minimize the impact of Limbaugh. He has influence. But there is a limit to where anyone can lead conservatives [if it's] where they don't want to be led."
Another conservative politico, Rich Galen, who worked for Thompson until he pulled out, argues that the Democrats are in far more trouble than McCain: "The lines are hardening between Hillary and Obama. It's going to go on for week after week. If you think fissures are bad there now, wait until Obama goes to the floor with more delegates, and the superdelegates come out for Hillary."
The talk-show brigade, however, is keeping itself relevant—and profitable—by continuing its tirade. "Part of this is a herd mentality," says Michael Medved, who claims he's the only talk-show host—liberal or conservative—to endorse McCain. "There are a bunch of talk-show hosts who wait to see what position Rush will take. They are the Mini-Me's to Rush's Dr. Evil." Medved and others suspect the right-wing rants are mainly a ratings grab. "The irony is that Limbaugh, by attacking McCain and having him win anyway, may end up with a larger audience because people that don't like McCain will rally around him," says Michael Harrison, editor and publisher of Talkers magazine, the main trade journal for the talk-show industry. "The person who takes the unpopular view in radio often gets the biggest audience because so many other people are competing for the popular view. Limbaugh is the smartest man on the air. He is a brilliant broadcaster and a great talent … Hillary would be better for conservative hosts than McCain. They are all salivating over the hope that Hillary will get elected." If the conservative leaders keep at it, they just might make their hopes come true.
So Much for a Warm Welcome
John McCain is the presumptive GOP nominee for president. In the face of serious opposition, his campaign is reaching out to movement leaders and trying to make nice.
By Eve Conant, Holly Bailey and Michael Hirsh
NEWSWEEK
Feb 9, 2008
Ann Coulter has made controversy her currency, outrage her oeuvre. And a lot of currency it is: over the past decade, Coulter's earned a huge amount of money from an unbroken streak of six best sellers, each an angry diatribe against liberals, most featuring her slim blond figure on the cover. Coulter Inc. has helped inspire a cottage industry of imitators, books that all seem designed to feed off the frustrations of the angry right. ("Liberal Fascism," by Jonah Goldberg, is the latest to hit it big.) But Coulter has a subspecialty all her own: uttering remarks so off the charts, so contrary to every norm of civil discourse, that they attract national news coverage. A few months ago she declared on TV that Jews need "to be perfected," and suggested that America would be better off if it were all Christian. Last week Coulter attacked her own party's presumptive nominee. John McCain, Coulter said, was a traitor to conservatives, so much so that she'd campaign for Hillary Clinton if he were nominated. Was there anything the Arizona senator could do, NEWSWEEK e-mailed her later, to change her mind? Would she really stump for Clinton? "I don't know," she wrote. Then she added: "McCain could invent a time machine, travel back in time" and take back all his liberal-leaning votes in Congress. "Short of that," she said, "the only thing that would work is if he put a gun to my head, but since McCain is also against gun rights, that's out." (McCain backed a measure to close a gun-show loophole on background checks, but is otherwise supportive of gun rights.)
As McCain draws closer to the GOP nomination, many leaders of the conservative movement have gone into convulsions. The biggest headline-grabber was Coulter, who, true to form, seemed to set a new low for immoderation. But that didn't stop a slew of other prominent hard-right pundits, most on talk radio, from trying to outrant her. Rush Limbaugh, the most popular right-wing radio host, had been railing against McCain for years, and now declared that if he were nominated, "it's going to destroy the Republican Party." "He's just a lousy senator and a terrible Republican," said Hugh Hewitt, another syndicated talk-show host. "His votes the past seven to 10 years have been on the wrong side of the issues." The revolt went beyond talk radio's political shock jocks. James Dobson, one of the nation's most prominent evangelical Christian leaders, declared he could not "in good conscience" vote for McCain and endorsed Mike Huckabee—the first time Dobson had ever taken sides in a GOP primary.
Other right-wing pundits counterattacked in what has become a case of a party's base bringing chaos out of order. Bill Bennett, the onetime drug czar and conservative Washington pundit who now has his own show, asked his fellow radio hosts to tone things down. "Who is he to say that?" retorted one of them, Michael Savage, who sometimes rivals Coulter in controversy. "He's got a minuscule audience and no credibility. If he wants to start some internecine war, then here we go: he's a blowhard." The uncivil war also pulled in some stalwarts of the GOP "base," such as Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. "Rush is even ranting against me," Land tells NEWSWEEK. "I had the temerity to challenge the Great One in his all-knowing wisdom. Rush is underestimating the ability of Hillary or [Barack] Obama to unite conservatives around McCain. Rush says on air, 'Dr. Land, I'll tell you, I talk to 20 million people a day.' No he doesn't. He talks at 20 million people a day." (Limbaugh declined NEWSWEEK's interview request.) Does the Limbaughian view matter, really? The numbers suggest an apparent gap between the movement's leaders and rank-and-file conservatives. In the new NEWSWEEK Poll, McCain holds a marginal lead among conservatives (49 to 43 percent) in a showdown with Huckabee. Seventy-six percent of all GOP voters and 69 percent of self-described conservatives say they would be satisfied with McCain as the GOP nominee. However, on Saturday, the first test since McCain became the presumptive nominee, Huckabee trounced McCain in the Kansas caucus, winning around 60 percent of the vote.
As the country learned anew in 2000 and 2004, every vote counts—especially every vote in states (like Ohio) where the margin of victory in a general election is likely to be narrow. If even a handful of conservatives were to follow the Limbaugh-Coulter line and stay home, it could make a real difference. McCain knows that, which is why he is moving to address the trouble to his right. Sens. Tom Coburn and Sam Brownback, widely respected among right-to-lifers, have been contacting prominent social conservatives, including many members of Congress, urging them to take a second look at McCain's record. Former vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp, a hero to fiscal conservatives and a frequent guest on Limbaugh's show, tells NEWSWEEK he "just finished a first draft of an open letter to Sean [Hannity] and Rush and Laura [Ingraham] and the other conservative talk-show hosts." Former senator Phil Gramm has been tasked with reaching out to lawmakers, as well as activists in the conservative movement. A senior McCain adviser, who didn't want to be named discussing internal strategy, says that Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of McCain's closest allies in the Senate, made a direct appeal last week to Hannity, the radio and TV host, who has railed against McCain in recent weeks. Meanwhile, that McCain adviser, and another who didn't want to be named for the same reason, confirm to NEWSWEEK that there has been tentative outreach to Limbaugh—though McCain himself has not been directly involved in that effort.
Reaching out, though, is not pandering. McCain tried that once, and it didn't work; he does not want to try it again. In 2000, he avoided hard questions about whether South Carolinians could fly the Confederate flag over their statehouse by invoking "states' rights"—an approach that backfired when George W. Bush won the primary. (He later reversed himself, saying his earlier decision had been motivated by politics.) He tried early in this campaign to make nice with social conservatives by reaching out to prominent evangelicals such as Jerry Falwell, whom he'd called "agents of intolerance." But his wooing of the right alienated independents and moderates who liked his straight-talk image. By July, his campaign was virtually broke and his candidacy was written off.
Now McCain is "unwilling to bow and kiss the ring" of his antagonists, says one adviser, who didn't want to be named fanning any flames. (Regarding Coulter, another top McCain aide snorts—anonymously, for the same reason—"I don't care what she thinks.") Do their diatribes bother McCain? "I don't listen to them … I've never even met them," McCain says. "I don't even listen to Rush … I'm not a masochist." Asked if it wouldn't make his life simpler to call Dobson and seek common ground, McCain shrugs. "I know what it takes to unite the party," he says. He needs to put that knowledge into action, and fairly soon. It seems possible that the conservative movement—the dominant force in American politics since the Reagan Revolution—has become so dogmatic that it might choose purity over victory.
Conservatives have been here before. Twenty years ago, in 1988, they ultimately coalesced behind George H.W. Bush, who had run as a moderate in 1980 before moving rightward as vice president. Hard-core conservatives were never entirely comfortable with the senior Bush, but, presented with the possibility of a Michael Dukakis presidency, the activists chose to believe that Bush's conservatism was real. The question for them now is whether they will go to McCain's side as they did to Bush's in 1988. (By 1992, the right—including, for a time, Limbaugh—had grown unhappy with Bush, which hurt him in his failed re-election bid, first in the primaries against Pat Buchanan and then in the general against Bill Clinton and Ross Perot.) According to surveys, McCain is competitive in head-to-head match-ups with Clinton and Obama, largely because he appeals to conservative Democrats and independents. Part of his pitch is that he can "reach out" (a phrase that Limbaugh, on his show last week, repeated disgustedly, imitating McCain's voice). Yet Democrats seem far more determined than Republicans to vote this year. They've turned out for primary and caucus voting in far greater numbers, and the new NEWSWEEK Poll shows less enthusiasm among Republican voters for McCain than there is among Democratic voters for Obama and Clinton. McCain can ill afford to continue to alienate an influential chunk of the Republican base if he wants to win. For now, he seems to be depending on aides to mend fences: respected conservatives such as Charlie Black, a former Reagan adviser, are quietly reaching out to critics. He's also counting on some of the anger to be diverted as the campaign shifts toward a battle with the Democrats.
McCain may, in fact, have a better sense of America's shifting political mood than his detractors. "More and more of us are independents," says pollster John Zogby. "More people are not wedded to a party, a candidate or an ideology." Michael Dimock of the Pew Research Center says poll numbers show a small shift away from the GOP. About 34 percent of registered voters identified themselves as independents in 2007, up from about 30 percent in 2006, he says. That's the highest it's been since 1999, and almost all the slippage has been on the Republican side. Many in the Republican Party base, meanwhile, seem to believe it's still the same country it was a political generation ago—their country, in other words. "Conservatives are on the eternal search for a new Reagan," columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote in The Washington Post last Friday. "They refuse to accept that a movement leader who is also a gifted politician is a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon."
The senator's persona is bound up in his ethos of defiance and courage—the witty raconteur of the Straight Talk Express whose penchant for getting in the face of his critics dates back to his days as an antic troublemaker at the Naval Academy. Before his speech last Thursday to the Conservative Political Action Committee in Washington, D.C., McCain told NEWSWEEK that he knew he'd probably be booed. (The admission came with a smile.) Privately, his aides worried about a full-scale walkout from the giant ballroom—or, even worse, people throwing things at the stage. "Tomatoes we are good with," said one McCain adviser, who didn't want to be named making light of a tense situation. "Rocks … not so much. Hopefully, they'll pat those folks down." There were no projectiles, but plenty of hoots, especially when McCain admitted he'd "made mistakes."
The hoots could be a problem. Coulter has a devoted readership, and Limbaugh and his peers have huge, loyal audiences (nearly 14 million at last count for Limbaugh), because they are saying things many conservative Americans want to hear. Gary Bauer, president of American Values, says: "Conservatives have been in a funk for a couple of years now for a variety of reasons, including disappointment over the 2006 elections. But the movement is alive and well, and I, for one, think the best days for conservatives are still ahead. Our philosophy is in tune with most Americans. It's significant that every candidate was trying to outdo the others in appealing to conservative voters." Lee Edwards, a Heritage Foundation historian who studies the conservative movement, agrees. "Most voters still support a limited government, a strong national defense and basic conservative ideas," he says. The reason the Republican nominee this year wasn't more conservative, he believes, is not a reflection of a move to the middle, but the lack of a strong and viable leader of that ilk: Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson were all fatally flawed.
In retrospect, McCain may have been saved by his campaign meltdown last summer, says Grover Norquist, another prominent conservative activist and president of Americans for Tax Reform. "Had he stayed the front runner, the talk-show hosts would have had the opportunity to make a case against him," Norquist says. But they didn't realize he was making a comeback until New Hampshire and South Carolina, and "by the time they tried to make a case, it was too late."
Conservatives have long memories, and plenty of what they recall is painful. In the last decade or so, McCain has sinned mightily against right-wing orthodoxy. He cosponsored the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, which undermined a bedrock GOP belief that money is a form of free speech (and deprived conservative lobbying groups of influence); he joined the Senate's "Gang of 14," which forged a middle ground over the nomination of conservative judges, and he supported a compromise on illegal immigration. "McCain's apostasies are too numerous to count," wrote Krauthammer. "He's held the line on abortion, but on just about everything else he could find—tax cuts, immigration, campaign finance reform, Guantánamo—he not only opposed the conservative consensus but also insisted on doing so with ostentatious self-righteousness."
McCain's rise is the latest in a series of conservative disappointments (news that will surprise the many liberals who think the right has been running the country for seven years). "Conservatives are in open rebellion now," says longtime conservative activist Richard Viguerie. "We've been treated shabbily by Republican establishment politicians. We've been treated like the proverbial country cousins. They'll invite us to the wedding but make us sit in the back. All that Limbaugh, Coulter, Savage and the others are doing is just reflecting what's happening at the grass roots. The Republican Party is in shambles. McCain is trailing among conservatives, and conservatives are the base of the Republican Party. Sure, he's getting the lion's share of moderate and liberal Republicans, but they make up only one third of the Republican vote."
No one knew this better than McCain himself as he strode to the podium of CPAC's annual meeting in the Omni Shoreham Hotel, a gathering that served as ground zero for the right-wing outrage last week. McCain had snubbed this convocation for years. But now the McCainiacs were growing worried that conservative Republicans would not rally on voting day and perhaps stay home. "The Republican Party needs to find its bottom," says conservative talk-show host Glenn Beck. "I'm an alcoholic. I understand what it means to bottom out. When you find your bottom—when you say, 'I can't live like this anymore, I can't live this lie'—that's when Republicans and conservatives will start doing some real soul-searching to determine what their values are."
McCain and his campaign know that the conservative uprising poses serious practical problems as well. A senior McCain aide, who didn't want to be named talking about the campaign's woes, cites the difficulty in fund-raising that the candidate faced a year ago when GOP critics targeted his compromise position on immigration reform. (McCain championed a bill with archliberal Ted Kennedy that would have allowed illegal aliens to participate in a worker-visa program. He later retreated.) Campaign donations quickly dried up—particularly among small donors, whose checks are looked upon as an indication of how much grass-roots support a candidate is getting. Aides privately worry that more barking from McCain's critics could create a similar scenario—a devastating financial blow in an election year when Republicans are already being outspent and outraised by Democrats. "We can get past people bashing us—even [George W.] Bush got some of that," says a McCain adviser, who declined to be named discussing internal strategy. "But if it starts affecting [the money], it's a problem." Coulter tells NEWSWEEK that she herself was "rather surprised at how ferocious and immediate the support was for my preference for Hillary over McCain on the Internet and in my In box. I thought it would take me a few more times at bat to explain my position fully. Oh no, no, no!"
It's no surprise, then, that McCain and his aides worked hard on his CPAC speech, in which he made the case that he was a "proud conservative" and was the only thing standing between conservatism and disaster. It was a direct appeal to the base. "I'm a Republican," McCain said six times in the speech, while his audience often sat on their hands. Despite polite cheers at the end, the crowd was unmoved. Matthew Bixler, a 22-year-old student at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, was one of those booing. "He was just playing to his audience," Bixler says, "talking about making tax cuts permanent that he didn't support in the first place. What kind of straight talk was that? I think he pandered to, if not even manipulated, this crowd." Justin Goins, 20, who also attends Liberty, says: "I just don't know how we could ever trust this man. Aside from being pro-life, he doesn't have much to go on in terms of how he's voted. How great is it that three different people had to come out before his speech and ask people not to boo?"
Still, the Omni Shoreham is not the Hanoi Hilton. John McCain is a man who has survived at least two near-death experiences: once as a prisoner in Vietnam, and a second time last summer, when he found himself abandoned and left for political dead by his party (before managing to revive his campaign almost single handedly). Last Thursday, McCain knew, it was not just he who was being cast aside. His right-wing critics were themselves getting dumped by his once bitter rival, Mitt Romney.
A few hours before McCain's speech, Romney shocked the crowd by saying he was bowing out of the GOP race. In the end, Romney hit on the one reason he knew would appeal: he could not leave the nation to suffer the calamity that a Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama presidency would mean to the War on Terror. At least McCain, the arch-hawk on Iraq, would not allow that to happen. "They would retreat, declare defeat, and the consequences of that would be devastating," Romney told the CPAC gathering as his anguished supporters shouted, "No! no!" "In this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror." To soften up the enemy's defenses, McCain sent in a coterie of conservative allies, like Coburn and former senator George Allen, to make his case. At Friday's CPAC meeting, McCain got what may be the biggest boost of all: an implicit endorsement by President Bush, who, without mentioning McCain by name, told the CPAC faithful: "We have had good debates, and soon we will have a nominee who will carry the conservative banner into this election and beyond."
McCain has been directly involved in getting the endorsements of Allen—who had been supporting Thompson before he dropped out—and Ken Mehlman, the former Republican National Committee head who managed Bush's 2004 re-election campaign. Mehlman, who was previously uncommitted, announced his endorsement of McCain late Thursday. McCain had spoken to both men by phone in recent weeks, hoping to line up their support. A senior McCain aide, who also didn't want to be named discussing internal strategy, tells NEWSWEEK that campaign emissaries also talked to former Senate majority leader Bill Frist, who had been supporting Thompson, and former senator Bob Dole, who has so far declined to endorse anyone in the race, citing his wife's Senate re-election bid in North Carolina. Dole has, however, defended McCain against attacks from Limbaugh.
McCain has also been doing major outreach on judges, reassuring conservatives that he'll deliver what for many of them is a key benefit of a Republican presidency. "I strongly supported John Roberts and Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court," he said in a statement to the Federalist Society. "I would seek men and women like them as my judicial appointees." In the conservative movement, says one GOP strategist who declined to be named while talking about private discussions, McCain's statement is being received as a "read my lips, no more Souters" pledge—a reference to Supreme Court Justice David Souter, who was thought to be a staunch conservative, but revealed more liberal views on the bench.
Even Coulter, whom many conservative politicos privately deride as an attention seeker, says she has been contacted by emissaries she won't identify. "Yes, I won't reveal private communications, but they were friendly on both sides," she says. "Behind the scenes, McCain's people are demanding that TV and radio banish me, so I guess I'm at least as likely to be audited by a McCain administration as a Clinton administration."
One of McCain's secret weapons appears to be Charlie Black, who is widely respected among Washington conservatives. Black had hoped to sit out this contest, but got involved when McCain appealed to him last year to help his troubled campaign. Since then, Black, along with other top McCain staffers, has labored free of charge. He's a regular at Norquist's weekly meetings and was once a board member of the American Conservative Union. Aides say he, along with Gramm, has been coordinating the outreach effort. While no promises have been made, some in McCain's camp have also been suggesting that the candidate's veep choice will go a long way toward assuaging the right, as will Black's likely role as the White House's "new Karl Rove." "Look, we know these people very well," Black tells NEWSWEEK. "A lot of us grew up in the conservative movement. We have a lot of conversations going on with different people."
But just as with his boss, there are times when Black doesn't sound entirely conciliatory. He believes that Limbaugh (whom he says he has known for 20 years) and others won't sit out the election, in spite of their threats. "It doesn't have to be unanimous until [the primary is] over," Black says. "When they understand … there's nothing else [they] can do, it's McCain versus Clinton or Obama, the huge difference will cause them to support McCain."
Even most of McCain's worst critics believe things will calm down. "Samuel Johnson once said that the prospect of hanging concentrates the mind wonderfully," says Hugh Hewitt. "Hillary and Obama are right over the hill; this might not just be a loss in 2008 but an exile for 16 years." Others, like National Review bloggers calling themselves Reaganauts for McCain, call for some perspective, reminding readers that right-wingers have long felt betrayed by the presidents they elect. "The Old GOP Establishment said terrible things, untrue things, about Ronald Reagan," the blog said. "Some in this new Establishment are also saying terrible and untrue things about another maverick conservative, John McCain."
Richard Land says the GOP will, in the end, do what it does best: unite. "I find it hard to believe that there are many conservatives who, when push comes to shove and they contemplate what it would be to have Hillary Clinton with the added pain of Bubba back in the White House, or Obama, that they won't eventually rally behind whoever the Republican nominee is as long as they are pro-life," says Land. "I don't want to minimize the impact of Limbaugh. He has influence. But there is a limit to where anyone can lead conservatives [if it's] where they don't want to be led."
Another conservative politico, Rich Galen, who worked for Thompson until he pulled out, argues that the Democrats are in far more trouble than McCain: "The lines are hardening between Hillary and Obama. It's going to go on for week after week. If you think fissures are bad there now, wait until Obama goes to the floor with more delegates, and the superdelegates come out for Hillary."
The talk-show brigade, however, is keeping itself relevant—and profitable—by continuing its tirade. "Part of this is a herd mentality," says Michael Medved, who claims he's the only talk-show host—liberal or conservative—to endorse McCain. "There are a bunch of talk-show hosts who wait to see what position Rush will take. They are the Mini-Me's to Rush's Dr. Evil." Medved and others suspect the right-wing rants are mainly a ratings grab. "The irony is that Limbaugh, by attacking McCain and having him win anyway, may end up with a larger audience because people that don't like McCain will rally around him," says Michael Harrison, editor and publisher of Talkers magazine, the main trade journal for the talk-show industry. "The person who takes the unpopular view in radio often gets the biggest audience because so many other people are competing for the popular view. Limbaugh is the smartest man on the air. He is a brilliant broadcaster and a great talent … Hillary would be better for conservative hosts than McCain. They are all salivating over the hope that Hillary will get elected." If the conservative leaders keep at it, they just might make their hopes come true.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Conservative Pundits Against McCain
http://www.theonion.com/content/infograph/conservative_pundits_against
February 13, 2008 Issue 44•07
Conservative Pundits Against McCain
Conservative pundits Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Ann Coulter have spoken out against Republican presidential candidate John McCain, with Coulter even promising to campaign for Clinton if McCain is the Republican nominee. Here are some of the reasons:
Fears McCain will take away America's God-given right to torture a Muslim
Too Arizona-y
Was once a prisoner of war of a foreign enemy, a shameful stigma shared only by presidents Washington and Jackson
McCain and Coulter have both dated same girl from Tucson
McCain strongly, but not vehemently, supports the war
Has been spotted conversing with Democrats
Book sales, speaking fees, TV talk shows
McCain is soft on hate
February 13, 2008 Issue 44•07
Conservative Pundits Against McCain
Conservative pundits Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Ann Coulter have spoken out against Republican presidential candidate John McCain, with Coulter even promising to campaign for Clinton if McCain is the Republican nominee. Here are some of the reasons:
Fears McCain will take away America's God-given right to torture a Muslim
Too Arizona-y
Was once a prisoner of war of a foreign enemy, a shameful stigma shared only by presidents Washington and Jackson
McCain and Coulter have both dated same girl from Tucson
McCain strongly, but not vehemently, supports the war
Has been spotted conversing with Democrats
Book sales, speaking fees, TV talk shows
McCain is soft on hate
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Why pay the bigot?
http://mediamatters.org/items/200706300002?f=h_top
Media Matters; by Jamison Foser
Friday June 29, 2007
Summary:
Why pay the bigot when you can get the bile for free?
In 1996, MSNBC hired Ann Coulter as a contributor. The Washington Post later quoted an MSNBC official describing Coulter's performance: "What she said was so outrageous she was immediately put on probation, and the next one was even worse." Coulter has acknowledged: "They kept firing me, but then they'd rehire me." Coulter barely lasted a year before MSNBC fired her for good for on-air comments she made to Vietnam Veterans of America founder Bobby Muller.
In 2003, less than five months after it began broadcasting his show, MSNBC fired Michael Savage for telling a caller he should "get AIDS and die." An MSNBC spokesperson explained: "Savage made an extremely inappropriate comment and the decision to cancel the program was not difficult." Just a few months earlier, then-NBC chairman Bob Wright had declared: "We strongly defend his new show as a legitimate attempt to expand the marketplace of ideas."
Earlier this year, MSNBC fired Don Imus after he made racist and sexist comments about the Rutgers University women's basketball team.
It may be tempting to conclude that, despite the ridiculous decisions to hire the likes of Coulter and Savage in the first place, the firings indicate that MSNBC understands that their violent and hateful rhetoric adds nothing of value to the public discourse.
But maybe MSNBC has simply decided that it doesn't make much sense to pay the bigot when you can get the bile for free.
On Tuesday, for example, MSNBC's Hardball featured Ann Coulter as the sole guest for the entire hour. MSNBC continues to provide a platform for Coulter's hate; the network's just stopped paying her.
During Coulter's last appearance on Hardball, in July 2006, host Chris Matthews told her, "You write beautifully," and, "You have a brilliant brain." He described her as "the picture of heaven." Then Coulter called former Vice President Al Gore a "total fag," and Matthews ended the interview by saying of Coulter, "We'd love to have her back."
Earlier this year, Coulter called Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards a "faggot" during a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). During an appearance on CNN Headline News' Glenn Beck this week, Coulter defended that comment, claiming, "I wasn't saying it on TV. I was saying it at a right-wing political convention with 7,000 college Republicans. I didn't put it on TV." Like much of what Coulter says, this wasn't true, and wouldn't be particularly meaningful even if it was. Coulter's speech was broadcast on C-SPAN, which extensively covers CPAC speeches. (Host Glenn Beck didn't point out Coulter's lie; nor did he point out that she used the same epithet to describe Gore "on TV.")
During her Monday appearance on ABC's Good Morning America, Coulter responded to a question about her CPAC description of Edwards as a "faggot" by saying, "Bill Maher was not joking and saying he wished Dick Cheney had been killed in a terrorist attack. So I've learned my lesson. If I'm gonna say anything about John Edwards in the future, I'll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot."
Those comments prompted the Edwards campaign to denounce Coulter, and Elizabeth Edwards called into Hardball the next day to confront Coulter.
Coulter and her defenders have criticized the Edwards campaign for omitting the Maher portion of her comments about wishing Edwards was killed by terrorists, claiming that her comments were taken out of context. But the context she claims is missing is itself false.
Coulter misrepresented Maher's comments about Cheney. In fact, Maher didn't say he wished Cheney had been killed; he said "if Dick Cheney was not in power, people wouldn't be dying needlessly tomorrow. ... I'm just saying that if he did die -- other people -- more people would live. That's a fact."
During the March 5 broadcast of his show, MSNBC host and former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough (FL) debunked his fellow conservatives' attacks on Maher: "Conservatives accuse Bill Maher of calling for Dick Cheney's assassination, but he didn't, and I should know. I was there." But Scarborough didn't correct Coulter when she appeared on Morning Joe, even though he and Coulter did discuss her reference to Maher.
During that same appearance on Morning Joe, Coulter falsely accused Elizabeth Edwards of lying about Coulter's November 19, 2003, column:
SCARBOROUGH: Now, I will tell you the part of that Elizabeth Edwards interview that jarred the most people -- jarred me, jarred just about everybody I spoke with -- was the part where she brought up the fact -- she said that you had written some column where you had made light of John Edwards' dead son. What's the story behind that?
COULTER: Needless to say, that is not true. And coming from people who have done what we have just seen them do in the earlier segment, I don't think they deserve a lot of credibility on this. You can look it up. It's all over the Web. It's a fabulous column, titled "The Party of Ideas," written in 2003. I had to go back and get the full gist of the column. It was about all of the Democratic primary opponents.
In the column in question, Coulter wrote of John Edwards: "If you want points for not using your son's death politically, don't you have to take down all those 'Ask me about my son's death in a horrific car accident' bumper stickers?"
Again, Scarborough did not challenge Coulter or confront her with what she had actually written; he simply accepted her assertion that Elizabeth Edwards had lied about the column.
On Thursday, MSNBC Live host Chris Jansing asked Elizabeth Edwards, "There are people who support your opinion, I'm sure you know, who say, 'Why even dignify it with a response? Why give Ann Coulter more publicity?' "
That same day, Jansing's network gave Ann Coulter publicity by hosting her on Morning Joe. Two days earlier, Jansing's network had given Ann Coulter publicity by hosting her -- alone, for a full hour -- on Hardball.
This week alone, Coulter appeared on ABC's Good Morning America, MSNBC's Hardball, MSNBC's Morning Joe, CNN Headline News' Glenn Beck, and Fox News' Hannity & Colmes. (On Fox, she took a swipe at Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama: "I do think anyone named B. Hussein Obama should avoid using 'hijack' and 'religion' in the same sentence.")
The notion that the targets of Ann Coulter's hateful speech should ignore her and she'll go away is absurd. Coulter was booked on Good Morning America and Hardball long before Elizabeth Edwards confronted her. Time magazine put Coulter on its cover long before Elizabeth Edwards confronted her. NBC's Today hosted her -- repeatedly -- long before Elizabeth Edwards confronted her.
It isn't Elizabeth Edwards who gives Ann Coulter publicity. It is the nation's leading news organizations. They may claim to find her distasteful, but they keep promoting her.
And they not only provide a forum for her hate speech and let her lie and dissemble without consequence, they repeat her false attacks on progressives as though they are true.
On Today, for example, David Gregory pretended that Ann Coulter has a point:
GREGORY: You said rather pointedly that you think Ann Coulter is guilty of hate speech against your husband and others as well. If you strip away some of the inflammatory rhetoric against your husband and other Democrats, the point she's trying to make about your husband, Senator Edwards, running for the White House is in effect that he's disingenuous, especially on the signature issue of poverty, whether it's a $400 haircut or taking big money to speak in front of a poverty group. If you, again, strip away the inflammatory rhetoric, is that a real point of vulnerability that you have to deal with in this campaign?
This is complete and total bunk.
There's simply no reason to pretend that Ann Coulter calling John Edwards a "faggot" and musing about him being killed by terrorists is about anything other than Ann Coulter being a contemptible human being and a national disgrace. There's no deep point there; she's just a sad and pathetic little person.
But that isn't all: Gregory made the nonsensical suggestion that John Edwards is "disingenuous" about poverty because he paid a lot of money for a haircut. It doesn't matter how often pundits keep saying that, it's still dumb. Gregory's statement that Edwards took "big money to speak in front of a poverty group" repeated Coulter's own false claim that he "charge[d] a poverty group $50,000 for a speech." This falsehood is apparently a reference to a paid speech Edwards made at the University of California-Davis, not "in front of a poverty group." So, obviously, he didn't "charge a poverty group" (in fact, his speaking fee was offset by ticket sales.)
Ann Coulter is not only a remarkably unpleasant person, she's a serial liar. And yet NBC's David Gregory -- among other journalists -- pretends that she has a meaningful point and makes false assertions about progressives based on her lies.
That's why it would be folly for progressives to ignore Coulter in hopes that she goes away: because the media don't ignore her. They promote her. They parrot her false claims. It's also why progressives should not only denounce Coulter, but MSNBC and ABC and CNN and Time and every other news organization that gives her a platform and doesn't challenge her lies and repeats them as though they are true.
During the Wednesday edition of Scarborough Country, MSNBC viewers got a hit of another reason why it would be folly to let Ann Coulter's hate and lies go unchallenged. An MSNBC contributor said of Coulter: "I don't think she's peddling hate. And if she -- and MSNBC certainly doesn't ... because if they did, they would never put her on the air for an hour, would we, Dan?"
The MSNBC contributor? Pat Buchanan.
The same Pat Buchanan who called Martin Luther King Jr. "one of the most divisive men in contemporary history."
The same Pat Buchanan who called Adolf Hitler "an individual of great courage" and wrote a column questioning whether World War II was "worth it" and wondered, "[W]hy destroy Hitler?"
There was Pat Buchanan, paid contributor to MSNBC, repeatedly vouching for Ann Coulter:
JOAN WALSH (Salon.com editor in chief): Ann Coulter had a whole hour to herself on Hardball, and she was going to sell her books and peddle her hate on Hardball pretty much unchallenged.
[...]
BUCHANAN: Joan, let me tell you where you're wrong here.
WALSH: Yes, Pat, sure.
BUCHANAN: I don't think she's peddling hate. And if she -- and MSNBC certainly doesn't --
WALSH: "Faggot"? "Faggot"?
BUCHANAN: -- because if they did, they would never put her on the air for an hour, would we, Dan?
WALSH: Well, she wasn't on for quite a while after she called --
DAN ABRAMS (MSNBC general manager): Oh, come on, Pat. Come on.
BUCHANAN: Well, come on! I mean --
WALSH: -- after she called Al Gore a "total fag."
ABRAMS: Pat is misusing his MSNBC analyst moniker there.
WALSH: Thank you, Dan.
ABRAMS: Go ahead, Pat.
BUCHANAN: Look, she is very, very -- look, she's a very good debater, and she's very good on TV and good on her feet, and she's a conservative, and she's an excellent writer. [New York Times columnist] Maureen Dowd's an excellent friend on the other side.
WALSH: No. No, Pat. You're -- Pat, you know what? You're a good debater.
[crosstalk]
BUCHANAN: She's good --
WALSH: You're a good debater.
ABRAMS: [Congressional Quarterly columnist] Craig Crawford -- wait. Wait.
WALSH: She peddles hate.
ABRAMS: Let's at least admit something, Craig Crawford.
BUCHANAN: Oh, cut it out.
WALSH: No, seriously.
[...]
ABRAMS: But that glosses over -- hang on. Hang on a second. That glosses over -- Pat. Pat, what you're doing is you're cherry-picking the pure politics stuff out of what she says and ignoring the sort of unnecessary hateful words that she uses, as well.
BUCHANAN: What hateful word did she use?
ABRAMS: You know, she described him as a gay person, but using a different term.
BUCHANAN: A what? Oh, you mean, that thing?
Pat Buchanan hasn't suffered from his own history of inflammatory comments: He has repeatedly been hired to host television shows on CNN and MSNBC; he currently works as a contributor to MSNBC, where he defends Coulter from charges that she peddles hate.
If people look the other way when Ann Coulter lies and smears and insults, it will only be a matter of time before Coulter will have her own cable television perch from which she can defend the next generation of right-wing hate merchants.
Monday, July 2, 2007
Time for an Ann Coulter Ban
http://www.film.com/tv/story/timeforananncoulterban/13982602/15287733
Time for an Ann Coulter Ban
Ethan Morris, Jun 28, 2007
Okay, enough is enough. Will someone please get Ann Coulter off my TV set?
Seriously. The FCC needs to implement an Ann Ban as soon as humanly possible.
Aside from the fact that many believe her to be a raving lunatic, now she's all but threatened the life of a presidential candidate.
In an interview on ABC's Good Morning America, Coulter said she wished Democratic candidate John Edwards "had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot."
The ultra-super-duper-uber-over-the-top conservative columnist and frequent talk show guest says she was merely making a point, after notoriously liberal talk show host Bill Maher made a similar comment about Vice President Dick Cheney.
In fact, what Maher said was that if Dick Cheney had been killed in a real (but failed) attempted assassination in Afghanistan, fewer people would be dying in Iraq right now. "If he did die," Maher said at the time, "other people, more people would live." But he didn't actually "wish" Cheney dead.
Technically, Coulter didn't either. Here's her exact quote: "If I'm going to say anything about John Edwards, I'll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot." By couching her words with conditionals like "if" and "I'll" and by using the past tense, Coulter will no doubt avoid any trouble from the law. (Presidential candidates get protection from the Secret Service and threatening their lives is a serious no no.)
But she couldn't stave off a response from Edwards' wife, who called Coulter when she later appeared on MSNBC's Hardball. Elizabeth Edwards asked Coulter to stop attacking her husband with such hate language. Coulter smirkingly refused, and it quickly degenerated into a shouting match.
Now listen: I'm not some liberal who hates Ann Coulter for her politics. I hate Ann Coulter because I, and a lot of others, think she's a venomous nut case.
This is the woman who wishes Timothy McVeigh had blown up the New York Times building.
This is the woman who wants to invade other countries, kill their leaders, and convert the entire world to Christianity. (Does that include Israel, Ann?)
This is the woman who quotes God as saying man should "rape" the earth so we don't end up "living like the Indians."
Now she's implying a death wish against a presidential candidate.
I'm sorry, but this goes way beyond political debate. It's nothing more than venal pandering for profit. Coulter's outrageous statements are obviously designed for the sole purpose of selling her books and getting people to read her columns. (And getting sucker-bloggers like me to waste time writing my opinion about her!)
And her hateful spewing crosses the line. As a writer and journalist, I'm as big a supporter of free speech there is. But Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes helped us draw an important line when he pointed out that free speech doesn't mean you can yell "fire" in a crowded theater.
You can bet Don Imus must be wondering why he doesn't have a job right now.
Seriously, it's time for Ann to go. Shame on network executives and talk show hosts who agree to have Ann as a guest ever again. Shame on viewers for watching her, or for reading her columns. Shame on me if I ever write another word about her.
C'mon FCC. You can spare us all if you'll just implement an Ann Ban, punishable by a fine of one beeeeeelion dollars.
Time for an Ann Coulter Ban
Ethan Morris, Jun 28, 2007
Okay, enough is enough. Will someone please get Ann Coulter off my TV set?
Seriously. The FCC needs to implement an Ann Ban as soon as humanly possible.
Aside from the fact that many believe her to be a raving lunatic, now she's all but threatened the life of a presidential candidate.
In an interview on ABC's Good Morning America, Coulter said she wished Democratic candidate John Edwards "had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot."
The ultra-super-duper-uber-over-the-top conservative columnist and frequent talk show guest says she was merely making a point, after notoriously liberal talk show host Bill Maher made a similar comment about Vice President Dick Cheney.
In fact, what Maher said was that if Dick Cheney had been killed in a real (but failed) attempted assassination in Afghanistan, fewer people would be dying in Iraq right now. "If he did die," Maher said at the time, "other people, more people would live." But he didn't actually "wish" Cheney dead.
Technically, Coulter didn't either. Here's her exact quote: "If I'm going to say anything about John Edwards, I'll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot." By couching her words with conditionals like "if" and "I'll" and by using the past tense, Coulter will no doubt avoid any trouble from the law. (Presidential candidates get protection from the Secret Service and threatening their lives is a serious no no.)
But she couldn't stave off a response from Edwards' wife, who called Coulter when she later appeared on MSNBC's Hardball. Elizabeth Edwards asked Coulter to stop attacking her husband with such hate language. Coulter smirkingly refused, and it quickly degenerated into a shouting match.
Now listen: I'm not some liberal who hates Ann Coulter for her politics. I hate Ann Coulter because I, and a lot of others, think she's a venomous nut case.
This is the woman who wishes Timothy McVeigh had blown up the New York Times building.
This is the woman who wants to invade other countries, kill their leaders, and convert the entire world to Christianity. (Does that include Israel, Ann?)
This is the woman who quotes God as saying man should "rape" the earth so we don't end up "living like the Indians."
Now she's implying a death wish against a presidential candidate.
I'm sorry, but this goes way beyond political debate. It's nothing more than venal pandering for profit. Coulter's outrageous statements are obviously designed for the sole purpose of selling her books and getting people to read her columns. (And getting sucker-bloggers like me to waste time writing my opinion about her!)
And her hateful spewing crosses the line. As a writer and journalist, I'm as big a supporter of free speech there is. But Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes helped us draw an important line when he pointed out that free speech doesn't mean you can yell "fire" in a crowded theater.
You can bet Don Imus must be wondering why he doesn't have a job right now.
Seriously, it's time for Ann to go. Shame on network executives and talk show hosts who agree to have Ann as a guest ever again. Shame on viewers for watching her, or for reading her columns. Shame on me if I ever write another word about her.
C'mon FCC. You can spare us all if you'll just implement an Ann Ban, punishable by a fine of one beeeeeelion dollars.
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