Conservatives against Coulter

David Catron at The American Spectator and many of his commenters have turned against Ann Coulter over her support for Romney and Romneycare. Many think that something has happened to her. Some say she has lost her conservative principles. Others say she has lost her smarts. Others say she has lost her mind.

By the way, I also began saying several months ago that Coulter had changed. As I remember, there were two very different changes, coming one after the other, that I noticed. The first was that her edgy personality had gotten edgier than ever and that she seemed to be falling apart. The second was her new seriousness, as seen in her articles for Romney in which she makes a single sustained case without her usual jokes.

Still, I have to ask, what conservative principles has Ann Coulter ever had? Her entire career has consisted of bashing liberals. She has never articulated the conservative things she supposedly believes in that are better than the liberal things she opposes. And now that, after 15 years as a conservative writer, she is finally arguing strongly for something or someone, it is the non-conservative Romney and his Romneycare.

Also, Coulter’s attaching herself at the hip to some non-conservative Republican and taking remarkably stupid positions on his behalf is not new. Check out what I said about her all-out embrace of Bush and his Iraq policy in 2006. The title of the entry is, “Coulter takes stupid pills for her man.”

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But Coulter’s critics at TAS also seem off-base. They speak of Romney as though he were the equivalent of Bob Dole or John McCain. But Dole was brain dead, which Romney obviously isn’t. And McCain was an enemy of conservatism, whose greatest passion was sticking it to conservatives. Romney may be a weak conservative or a moderate, but he is not an anti-conservative. It is fantastically ironic that people who voted for the egregious McCain in 2008 are now declaring in high tones that they will never, ever, vote for Romney.

And who do they think would be better than Romney and have a better chance of defeating Obama? Gingrich?

So there’s a lot of stupid going around. The conservatives are unstrung. They can’t think coherently, because conservatism itself is incoherent.

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LA writes:

David Catron begins the article by saying, “There is no conservative writer that I admire more than Ann Coulter,” before he goes on to express his recent disappointment with her. He admires Coulter more than any other conservative writer? Talk about stupid conservatives! Talk about a movement in such intellectual incoherence and disarray, and so lacking in non-liberal principle, that it cannot possibly stand successfully against the left.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 06, 2012 11:39 AM | Send