When I Was Young, I Spake as a Child…

With friends like this, who needs enemies?

Prominently featured on John Edwards’ presidential campaign Web site is a video of conservative commentator Ann Coulter insulting him. And with just a mouse click you can hear the invective and get a chance to donate at the same time.

On Friday, Coulter, a writer and columnist known for provocative remarks, told an audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington: “I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot,’ so I – so kind of an impasse, can’t really talk about Edwards.”

In response, John Edwards is playing the quivering-lip of victimhood and cashing in on Coulter’s stupid comment. Meanwhile, three days of good conservative messages got drowned out while Coulter became the top story of every national newscast.

Thanks, Ann.

Sean Hackbarth and James Joyner have published an Open Letter to the CPAC organizers and sponsors demanding that they not invite Coulter to any future CPAC events, which is a good start. The letter is a firm denunciation of Coulter’s remarks now, and several she’s made in the past that should get as much publicity as Coulter’s remarks (though there’s no chance that it will). I fully endorse it and they may consider me a signatory as well.

I don’t think it goes far enough, though.

The problem with CPAC’s embracing Coulter as an honored speaker isn’t so much that she’s going to say something supremely insulting that will obliterate everything every speaker said before her. It’s that it tells the thousands of young conservatives who attend CPAC events that juvenile insults and shock language are the lingua franca of political discourse. We should be teaching our young conservatives that there is a profound difference not only between how conservatives and liberals think but also in how we act.

Back in the day I used to like Ann Coulter’s work a lot. I got really happy when she’d take a sledgehammer to some goofy leftist. I loved it when she used the same weapons on the left they used on us all the time. That wasn’t her entire schtick – she used to be one of the right’s real thinkers – but it was a big part of it.

I don’t anymore, though, and I haven’t or some years mostly because I grew up. She will never convince anyone that her views are worth considering because she’s regressed to the political equivalent of the Jackass TV show. That’s not where conservatives ought to be and that’s not who we ought to be paying to represent us in public. Let’s leave the childish stuff for the left, who have more than their share of vulgar insulting loudmouths.

Ann Coulter should never have a place of honor at a conservative event. That’s important. it’s more important, I think, to make sure that groups like CPAC invite speakers who can teach our young conservatives that mature thought and finely-honed arguments have always been what has moved us forward and always will. There are plenty of intelligent and entertaining speakers out there – Jonah Goldberg and Laura Ingraham come immediately to mind – for CPAC to call. We don’t need Coulter. She doesn’t help us at all.

UPDATE: John Hawkins at Right Wing News has a defense of Coulter via Rush Limbaugh that, to me, completely misses the point. I’ll quote a bit:

On the other hand, a lot of conservatives are sick and tired of the enormous double standard between the left and right. Duke Cunningham gets bribed and goes to jail, which is as it should be. But, William Jefferson gets bribed and he’s sitting on the Homeland Security Committee. Ann Coulter says something offensive and she gets ripped up one side and down the other by the right. Left wingers say and do offensive things and they get almost blanket support from the left. Look at Ted Kennedy, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Kos, Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, Ted Rall, Ray Nagin, John Murtha, Harry Belafonte, John Kerry, Charles Rangel, Jane Fonda, Bill Maher, Bob Fertik, Seymour Hersh, Mike Malloy, Randi Rhodes, Howard Dean, Cynthia McKinney, Robert Byrd, Bill Moyers, James Wolcott, Margaret Cho, and the whole New York Times among many, many others. What price have any of these people paid on the left for being obnoxious creeps and/or criminals?

None whatsoever.

So, I haven’t agreed with things Ann has said in the past, I didn’t agree with what she said at CPAC (and don’t think they should invite her back), and I fully anticipate criticizing things that she says in the future. However, what I don’t anticipate doing in the future is figuratively kicking her under a bus for the good of conservatism as long as the wretched hive of villainy listed above is still in the good graces of the left. When they get rid of their dozens and dozens of black sheep, then maybe Ann will have to go. But as long as liberals are allowed to compare Bush to Hitler and accuse conservatives of hating blacks, the poor, and old people without suffering any consequences on the left, then Ann is OK with me.

Two wrongs, as the saying goes, doesn’t make a right. I, personally, don’t care how often the left lets its shining lights say the most outrageous and insulting things. It’s still doesn’t make it right. Rush says that Coulter gives folks on the right an outlet for their anger but it’s the wrong outlet. If we’re so angry about how the MSM and the sanctimonius blowhards on the left get the kid glove treatment, then we take it to our friends and neighbors. We point out the inconsistencies and hypocrisies and crudities of the left, but we do not stoop to their level.

We never stoop to their level.

There is a difference between us and the left. The left is where you go to find hate and anger and bigotry exalted and given legitimate voice. The right is where you go to find solutions to your problems, freedom to make the best life you can, strength and nobility for your nation, and hope for the future off your children and grandchildren. We are fighting a war. We face the implosion of our Social Security system. We have a looming crisis in health care that we must solve. We do not have time to trade insults with the left. We have serious, adult work to do.

Ann Coulter gives us none of these things when she speaks nor does she get us any closer to dealing with the difficulties before us. All she offers today is snark and bile. It’s time we drew a clear line between how we act and how the left acts. Coulter’s behavior belongs to the left. Let them have it.

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Category: Political Pontifications, The Republican Minority