The Coultergeist Might Back the Hill

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Holy Endorsements, Batman!

For a minute I thought someone had slipped me some acid and I was hallucinating the whole thing. Maybe I will vote for McCain after all. Check out this video with Hannity; it's like nothing I would have imagined.

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/politics/blog/2008/02/ann_coulter_hillary_clintoncam.html

 

I have read things like this from many conservatives. I think the general thought is that McCain will be a fiasco for the country and conservatives would rather have a Democrat drive the country into ruin for four years and then hopefully a real conservative can be elected to right the ship.

 

Are you freaking kidding me? Ann Coulter, THE Ann Coulter, Ms. Twig-of-conservative-values, voting for Mrs. Hillary Clinton? I feel like I've just beamed up by a guy called Scotty, and he offered me a spam llama as a souvenier and a diet Pepsi for my troubles. I wish I could think of something smart to say, but I'll have to quote Rags' old signature - in this world, reality does beat satire.

This is 100% patent absurdity, Kopyrka certified.

 

Check out Coulter's exchange with Hannity...It doesn't sound much like what you are saying here. Besides, we've just had a conservaive "drive the country into the ground" for the last four years. So why would the next one be any different?

 

Well, if we are speaking seriously I'd say Mrs. Clinton is the most centrist Democratic candidate. However, I doubt many conservatives would acknowledge her over McCain.

 

I'm not saying that it would be any different. Without a doubt the GOP has lost its way by being in power for too long. However if we look at post WW2 history the GOP needs the Democrats to take contol of the presidency every once in a while to recharge themselves and the citizenry.

 

Rove and Bush played a bold gamble. They hold that America likes winners, and concluded that all that counts is winning. After that is done, the winner takes it all. Think about the GOPs unprecedented K-Street activities. They bet of winning, and if they won nobody except the disgruntled Dems (=sore losers) would care. Now things that can't go forever don't.

The GOP has no common line anymore. It is incoherent, which for a party that used to live off marching orders and centralised distributed talking points is devastating, either they need a new central command or they need to think for themselves about what conservatism means. That means that Bush and Rove have defeated the GOP, not the Dems who are still no match for the GOP as far as PR and branding is concerned. Even in defeat the GOP still runs circles around them in this regard. You see Dem candidates reiterating wording that has been carefully coined and market tested by their political enemy to subvert Dem messages - and then wonder why they lose and appear lame. Or take FOX which is as unabashed a GOP organ as a tv channel can be, who threw their weight behind Rudy Juliani, persistently spouting out his campaign line 'America's Mayor' (=branding). The Dems boycotting the FOX debates is a good start, but doesn't suffice. They seriously need to work on messaging to be able to compete.

So I rather do think that folks like Coulter and the 'folksy' FOX crowd are in fact so elitist that they're afraid of populist rubes who vote for McCain, Ron Paul or Huckabee who might make policy without asking them or following their line. No, rubes are not supposed to have a say, rubes are foot soldiers! Now how's that for a joke, too populist for Hannity and 'Avenger' O'Reilly.

 

I'm sure you realize that your sentiment works just as well in reverse.

 

This is all crazy. You all do realize this is crazy, right? Aw, who am I kidding, the whole world's nuts anyway, no big shocks here. If Clinton comes up as the Democratic candidate, I will seriously worry for the fate of the US. I can only hope that there will be some kind of congress that can stand up to her cut-throat tactics. She's nasty even for politics. If it comes up to Obama vs McCain or Romney, I'm really not sure who I'll vote for. neither of those reps appeal to me in the least.

 

It does, but in the recent past, and I'm going back to WW2 (starting with Eisenhower) the GOP has had 9 terms of presidency to the Dem's 5. That is almost 2 to 1. Over the past 60 years or so the GOP has controlled the Presidency with only brief interruption by the Democrats.

 

Sorry Chandos, I don't think that GWB qualifies as a conservative. I do agree that he's started driving the country into the ground. However, based on the available candidates on both sides, whoever is elected will undoubtedly finish the job.

 

Let's start counting at 1945, since that's the year WW2 ended, otherwise we would have to count FDR as a WW2 president:

Truman (D)
Eisenhower (R)
Kennedy (D)
Johnson (D)
Nixon/Ford (R) Ford was never elected and only finished Nixon's term; he never had a term of his own.
Carter (D)
Reagan (R)
Bush I (R)
Clinton (D)
Bush II (R)

That's actually 5/5 - not 9/5. Of course, I'm counting "elected" presidents as my measure.

 

That's pretty good, but I think showing it like this would be less misleading:

Truman (D)
Truman (D)
Eisenhower (R)
Eisenhower (R)
JFK/LBJ (D)
LBJ (D)
Nixon (R)
Nixon/Ford (R)
Carter (D)
Reagan (R)
Reagan (R)
HW Bush (R)
Clinton (D)
Clinton (D)
Gore/GW Bush (R)
GW Bush (R)

Looking at it this way, it appears that the score is 9-7.

 

My bad, I didn't count Truman, that is how I had 9-5. I forgot that he actually won an election. Although it should probably be 9-6 as Truman's first term was a continuation of FDR's last term and was still in WW2. Hell if we want to go way back to 1869 I get 21-14

 

You assume that Bush 'drove the country into the ground' because he was a conservative. I believe that is a poor assumption. Bush entered a war no other leader would have. The spending required to maintain the war has cost us dearly.

In general, I believe the market and the overall economy tend to perform better when republicans are in office. While social programs do better when democrats are in office. It's pretty much a wash for me -- but of the current candidates, I'd rather have McCain.

Coulter has always been a fool.

 

No, I don't. TGS's assumption is that the Democrats would "run the country to ruin" and that McCain would be a "fiasco" for the country. But if he thinks that GWB has not run the country into the ground because he IS a conservative, then I don't see why any other conservative would be any different, judging by his own standard. My own feeling is that some Democrats and/or liberals would be good for the country, and others would not be; same with the Republicans and conservatives. I am not captured by any particular party, not like some others, apparently. And what is also apparent is that even the Coultergeist appears to be more open minded and less partisan than others as well. That's quite astounding....

Prove it, cause I'm not believeing any of that.

 

Nice video. This is the only one I have seen from her, and as an outsider I can only react at this one. She has a few points though. She is the type of person , I guess, that has the capabillty to adjust better than the standard republican.

 

Well some, like Ron Paul, would argue that Bush is no conservative and, thus, we have a raft of problems these days.

Of course some would argue Hillary is no liberal.

 

That's the problem with trying to label and pigeonhole a particular indivdual. Bush is a conservative. But there are many shades of conservatism: Goldwater conservatives, Reagan conservatives, Libertarians, evangelical ones, neoconservatives. Bush is mostly an evangelical/neoconservative, with the emphasis on evangelical; Paul is a typical Libertarian/Reagan conservative and rejects any notion of nation-building, which is a mantra for neocons and evangelicals; the latter who love it because of the many state/government sponsored "opportunities" provided its missionaries.

How are they different? Did you know that it is widely believed that Goldwater advocated women's and abortion rights? How about gay rights? Well, yes. Mr. Conservative, Barry Goldwater, would have despised much of what GWB stands for.

The Hill is a "New Democrat." Somewhat like her husband (who was really the founder of the "New" Democrats), she is pragmatic and practical in her approach to liberalism. A lot of liberals (like myself) don't really consider her to be one of us, nor was Bill ever really all that liberal, for that matter. But Bill almost single-handedly moved liberalism to the center and made it a moderating force throughout most of the 1990s, but in the process giving up some of the idealism, which is at the heart of the old liberalism (Kennedy/Johnson).

And there are places of agreement where some conservatives and liberals intersect: GWB's harsh and ill-treatment of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is an excellent of example of this; the use of torture is a good example of where many Libertarians (like McCain) and Liberals find agreement. And again, Coulter is only marginally correct when she claims that Hill "has not been outspoken about the use of torture." Hill HAS spoken out about it, but has been somewhat low-key regarding the issue of torture overall. Whereas McCain, for obvious reasons, has been a greater force regarding the issue.

It's never as clear-cut as just accusing So-and-so of being a "Liberal," or a "Conservative." It's really much more complicated than that.