Coulter: Romney “manifestly the best candidate”

Which, of course, I’ve been saying all along. Also like me, Coulter is amazed that more people don’t see this. But where has Coulter been? If she regarded Romney so highly, why did she wait until after his big victory in the Michigan primary to endorse him? Why didn’t she endorse him when his candidacy was on the ropes and he really needed the help? It’s the same with immigration. Coulter had right-wing views on immigration and said nothing about them for 13 years until she finally wrote one column on the subject in 2007. Imagine the good she could have done, with the kind of influence and exposure she has, if she had spoken out sooner and more often. And now she waits until after Romney has survived a near-death experience to call him the best candidate. I think I’ll call her Foxhole Coulter.

Here is most of her column, “The elephant in the room”:

Unluckily for McCain, snowstorms in Michigan suppressed the turnout among Democratic “Independents” who planned to screw up the Republican primary by voting for our worst candidate. Democrats are notoriously unreliable voters in bad weather. Instead of putting on galoshes and going to the polls, they sit on their porches waiting for FEMA to rescue them.

In contrast to Michigan’s foul weather, New Hampshire was balmy on primary day, allowing McCain’s base—Democrats—to come out and vote for him.

Assuming any actual Republicans are voting for McCain—or for liberals’ new favorite candidate for us, Mike Huckabee—this column is for you.

I’ve been casually taking swipes at Mitt Romney for the past year based on the assumption that, in the end, Republicans would choose him as our nominee. My thinking was that Romney would be our nominee because he is manifestly the best candidate.

I had no idea that Republican voters in Iowa and New Hampshire planned to do absolutely zero research on the candidates and vote on the basis of random impulses.

Dear Republicans: Please do one-tenth as much research before casting a vote in a presidential election as you do before buying a new car.

One clue that Romney is our strongest candidate is the fact that Democrats keep viciously attacking him while expressing their deep respect for Mike Huckabee and John McCain.

This point was already extensively covered in Chapter 1 of “How To Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)”: Never take advice from your political enemies.

Turn on any cable news show right now, and you will see Democratic pundits attacking Romney, calling him a “flip-flopper,” and heaping praise on McCain and Huckleberry—almost as if they were reading some sort of “talking points.”

Doesn’t that raise the tiniest suspicions in any of you? Are you too busy boning up on Consumer Reports’ reviews of microwave ovens to spend one day thinking about who should be the next leader of the free world? Are you familiar with our “no exchange/no return” policy on presidential candidates? Voting for McCain because he was a POW a quarter-century ago or Huckabee because he was a Baptist preacher is like buying a new car because you like the color.

The candidate Republicans should be clamoring for is the one liberals are feverishly denouncing. That is Mitt Romney by a landslide….

Liberals claim to be enraged at Romney for being a “flip-flopper.” I’ve looked and looked, and the only issue I can find that Romney has “flipped” on is abortion. When running for office in Massachusetts—or, for short, “the Soviet Union”—Romney said that Massachusetts was a pro-choice state and that he would not seek to change laws on abortion.

Romney’s first race was against Sen. Teddy Kennedy—whom he came closer to beating than any Republican ever had. If Romney needed to quote “The Communist Manifesto” to take out that corpulent drunk, all men of good will would owe him a debt of gratitude.

Even when Romney was claiming to support Roe v. Wade, he won the endorsement of Massachusetts Citizens for Life—a group I trust more than the editorial board of The New York Times. Romney’s Democratic opponents always won the endorsements of the very same pro-choice groups now attacking him as a “flip-flopper.”

After his term as governor, NARAL Pro-Choice America assailed Romney, saying: “(A)s governor he initially expressed pro-choice beliefs but had a generally anti-choice record. His position on choice has changed. His position is now anti-choice.”

Pro-abortion groups like the Republican Majority for Choice—the evil doppelganger to my own group, Democratic Majority for Life—are now running videos attacking Romney for “flip-flopping” on abortion.

Of all the Republican candidates for president, Romney and Rudy Giuliani are the only ones who had to be elected in pro-choice districts. Romney governed as a pro-lifer and has been viciously attacked by pro-abortion groups.

By contrast, Giuliani cleverly avoids the heinous “flip-flopper” label by continuing to embrace baby-killing. (Rudy flip-flops only on trivial matters like illegal immigration and his own marital vows.)

And, of course, Romney is a Mormon. Even a loser Mormon like Sen. Harry Reid claims to be pro-life. So having a candidate with a wacky religion isn’t all bad.

At worst, Romney will turn out to be a moderate Republican—a high-IQ, articulate, moral, wildly successful, moderate Republican. Of the top five Republican candidates for president, Romney is the only one who hasn’t dumped his first wife (as well as the second, in the case of Giuliani)—except Huckabee. And unlike Huckabee, Romney doesn’t have a son who hanged a dog at summer camp. So there won’t be any intern issues and there won’t be any Billy Carter issues.

It’s also possible that Romney will turn out to be a conservative Republican—at least more conservative than he was as governor of Massachusetts. Whatever problems Romney’s Mormonism gives voters, remember: Bill Clinton came in third in heavily Mormon Utah in 1992.

- end of Coulter excerpt, end of initial entry -

LF writes:

I’ve heard Coulter on a number of media outlets say, until recently, that the only one of the Republican candidates she could enthusiastically support was Duncan Hunter. So, the present support for Romney may be nothing more than a concession to reality.

LA replies:

If that’s true, then her position becomes even harder to explain.

She supported Hunter even though she felt that Romney “manifestly the best candidate.”

Then she continued to remain silent about her support for Romney even after his campaign got into serious trouble. Did she think that it didn’t matter if she wrote on his behalf or not, because she believed Romney was certain to win despite the trouble he was in?

And then, after he escaped from the immediate threat of the death of his campaign, THEN she comes out in support of him!

There’s no making sense of her. It can’t be cowardice, given the way she puts herself in the middle of things and invites attacks. But then what is it?

The best explanation I can come up with is something I’ve said before: Though highly intelligent, she’s deeply unserious. She writes about things, not because she cares about them, but out of a whim, because she feels like it. She does it for vanity and fun.

And I’ve praised highly some of the things she’s written, especially chapters eight and nine of Godless.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 17, 2008 10:47 AM | Send