Ann Coulter Is Full Of It

Conservative HQ ^ | 2/21/14 | George Rasley

The leaders of the Big Government Republican establishment are beginning to get desperate. They are finally starting to grasp that the limited government constitutional conservatives of the Tea Party movement and other liberty-minded voters now understand that the first, and most important, fights in the battle to restore America are the Republican primary elections.

In a desperate effort to hold on to power they have begun to deploy one of their oldest tactics in the 100-year civil war in the Republican Party – calls for Party unity to back Big Government Republican incumbents who have betrayed conservative principles and are rightly facing primary challenges. Conservative author and commentator Ann Coulter whose incisive critiques of liberal policy follies and witty jibes at liberals and Democrats in general, make conservatism interesting and entertaining is only the latest in a long line of “conservatives” to get suckered into the idea that keeping establishment Republicans in power somehow advances the goal of governing America according to conservative principles. It doesn’t and it never has. "Of course, I love the Tea Party," Coulter said to Sean Hannity, but she limited the Tea Party movement to people in the "heart of America" who want to see change. She said Tea Party groups such as the Senate Conservatives Fund are just trying to bilk donors. In other words, now that the Tea Party movement has grown politically sophisticated enough to adopt the tools that the establishment uses to stay in power, such as PACs, and the Senate Conservatives Fund PAC is being effective against incumbent Big Government establishment Republicans, Coulter wants to disarm the opposition. But here’s where Ann Coulter is really full of it. “If it weren’t for shysters running against establishment Republicans we would have 51 Republicans senators right now,” Coulter told Sean Hannity referring to the 2012 blow-ups of the Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock Senate campaigns. Coulter’s comment shows just what a deep draught of the establishment Kool-Aid she has taken and is indicative of how the Big Government Republican establishment is desperately trying to rewrite history to advance the idea that only establishment candidates can win and that conservatives should “unite” behind Republican candidates who have records of betraying conservative principles. Akin and Mourdock weren’t first time rookie candidates; they were experienced Republican politicians with many campaigns under their belts. What’s more the comments that blew up their campaigns had nothing to do with the Tea Party’s limited government constitutional conservative agenda. They got suckered by the Democrats’ “war on women” strategy, put their foot in their mouth, were quickly abandoned by the GOP establishment despite conservative calls for Party unity, and consequently got beat. As our friend Chris Chocola of the Club for Growth put it so well, “the question isn’t why Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock lost — we know why they lost,” said Chocola. “The question is really why did Heather Wilson in New Mexico, Rick Berg in North Dakota, Denny Rehberg in Montana, Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin, George Allen in Virginia and Linda Lingle in Hawaii — why did they lose?” We could add Mitt Romney nationally and Connie Mack in Florida to Chocola’s list, but you get the point. The fact of the matter is that of the three Republican Senate victories in 2012; Nebraska’s Deb Fischer, Arizona’s Jeff Flake and Texas’ Ted Cruz all ran as Tea Party-oriented or anti-establishment candidates. There’s no evidence that running as a principled limited government constitutional conservative automatically made a candidate “unelectable” in 2012 and a whole lot of evidence that running as a Bush-type establishment Republican did make one “unelectable,” because despite the millions Karl Rove and his establishment Republican funders spent on them they all lost. Tit-for-tat is a poor reason to do anything, so we will forego the opportunity to explore where exactly were the establishment calls for Republican Party unity in campaigns where the conservative won the primary, such as the Goldwater, Reagan and Cuccinelli campaigns, when the Republican establishment did everything they could to undermine the conservative candidate after the primary. Calls for Republican “unity” and a free pass in the primary for incumbent establishment Republicans like Mitch McConnell, Lamar Alexander, Pat Roberts and Thad Cochran will only accomplish one thing; keeping ineffective and unprincipled establishment Republicans in power. And anyone, including our friend Ann Coulter, who thinks that advances the cause of conservative governance is full of it.