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Has Ann Coulter Gone Utterly Mad?
by John Mark Reynolds [author,
academic] 2/1/08
I just watched a program where Ann Coulter claims she will not vote for John McCain if he is the nominee of the Republican Party.
Coulter will vote for Senator Clinton, instead.
If I heard her correctly, she sees no policy differences between the pro-choice Clinton and the pro-life McCain.
Contributor
John Mark Reynolds
John
Mark Reynolds is the founder and director of
the Torrey Honors Institute and Associate Professor
of Philosophy at Biola University.His
personal website can be found at www.johnmarkreynolds.com and
his blog can be found at http://scriptoriumdaily.com.
[go to Reynolds index] |
I have always been hard pressed to understand or sympathize with some of Coulter’s statements. She frequently seems to confuse invective with argument, but this last statement is bizarre.
It suggests a need for mere attention on Coulter’s part is more important to her than ideas.
Since she is a believer, and I have friends who know her, I can only hope that this is a bad night for her and that that she also climbs down from her frequent use of destructive rhetoric in the last few years. But especially we need to end this narrowing of the Republican Party to the point that someone with over an eighty percent conservative rating like John McCain is declared a heretic.
Who wants to win a battle of ideas by name calling and narrowness?
Has conservatism grown so narrow? John McCain has been endorsed by major conservatives, is great on government spending, has a very conservative lifetime voting record, and is supported by Senator Tom Coburn . . . one of the single most conservative people to serve in government in my lifetime.
John McCain is a genuine war hero, a gentleman, and was an original supporter of Ronald Reagan.
Several times this campaign, I have written about my shock and horror at the rhetoric deployed in this race against conservatives like Mike Huckabee or Mitt Romney. Romney has been attacked for his religion by bigots and Huckabee has been read out of the movement for daring to use compassionate rhetoric.
John McCain is wrong on some key issues and lacks the communication skills needed to win. I don’t think he is a “movement conservative” to quote Newt Gingrich, but he is no liberal in the sense of Clinton or Obama.
McCain is much preferable to Clinton, but that is damning him with faint praise.
I hope John McCain is not the nominee and will vote for Mitt Romney this Tuesday, because I think him most qualified (on the whole for office), but who would want to be in a party so narrow that John McCain cannot be in it? ExileStreet
copyright
2007 John Mark Reynolds
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