Salon: The Coulterization of the American right

[babylonsister]

http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2007/03/13/coulter/

The Coulterization of the American right

The "faggot" episode isn't about Ann Coulter. It's about the deal conservatism made with the devil -- a deal that has cost it its soul.

By Gary Kamiya

March 13, 2007 | So Ann Coulter has done it again. She called John Edwards a "faggot" at a major conservative conference and everyone is outraged. But do we have to go through this ridiculous charade again? Nothing's going to happen. This is old and profitable hat for the shameless buffoon who once compared Hillary Clinton to a prostitute (when Clinton was first lady, no less) and displayed her keen grasp of geopolitical strategy after 9/11 by declaiming, "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." (Following her sage advice, George W. Bush acted on the first two recommendations, with splendid results, but the third, despite the best efforts of some of his holy pals, is proving difficult.) We all know that Coulter will emerge from this episode selling even more books, appearing on even more right-wing talk shows and being even more fanatically worshipped by her legions of fans. A few newspapers have dropped her column, and some GOP presidential candidates condemned her statement -- who cares? As should be amply clear by now, there is virtually nothing that Ann Coulter can do that will cause her to be cast out of the bosom of the American right. And even if she was to lose her head and cross a line that even she can't cross -- calling Obama a "nigger" is about the only thing that would do the trick -- a thousand hissing Coulters would spring up to take her place.

For this isn't really about Coulter at all. This is about a pact the American right made with the devil, a pact the devil is now coming to collect on. American conservatism sold its soul to the Coulters and Limbaughs of the world to gain power, and now that its ideology has been exposed as empty and its leadership incompetent and corrupt, free-floating hatred is the only thing it has to offer. The problem, for the GOP, is that this isn't a winning political strategy anymore -- but they're stuck with it. They're trapped. They need the bigoted and reactionary base they helped create, but the very fanaticism that made the True Believers such potent shock troops will prevent the Republicans from achieving Karl Rove's dream of long-term GOP domination.

It is a truism that American politics is won in the middle. For a magic moment, helped immeasurably by 9/11, the GOP was able to convince just enough centrist Americans that extremists like Coulter and Limbaugh did in fact share their values. But the spell has worn off, and they have been exposed as the vacuous bottom-feeders that they are.

It will be objected that Coulter, Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage and their ilk are just the lunatic fringe of a respectable movement. But in what passes for conservatism today, the lunatic fringe is respectable. In the surreal parade of Bush administration follies and sins, one singularly telling one has gone almost entirely unremarked: Vice President Dick Cheney has appeared several times on Rush Limbaugh's radio show. Think about this: The holder of the second-highest office in the land has repeatedly chummed it up with a factually challenged right-wing hack, a pathetic figure only marginally less creepy than Coulter. Imagine the reaction if Al Gore, when he was vice president, had routinely appeared on a radio show hosted by, say, Ward Churchill. (The comparison is feeble: There really is no left-wing equivalent of Limbaugh, just as there is no left-wing equivalent of Father Coughlin or Joe McCarthy.) The entire American political system would melt down. Beltway wise men would trip on their penny loafers in their haste to demand Gore's head. Robert Bork would come out of retirement to call for a coup to restore the caliphate, I mean the Judeo-Christian moral law in America. Yet the grotesque Cheney-Limbaugh love-in doesn't raise an eyebrow. We're so inured to the complete convergence of "respectable" conservatism and reactionary talk-radio ravings that we don't even deem it worthy of comment.


The right in America has always flirted with various forms of gutter populism, but its latest incarnation may represent its lowest limbo-dance yet. It's worth pausing for a moment to recall how this happened. Newt Gingrich, the adulterous moralist and demagogic hit man who led the vaunted Republican Revolution of 1994, is largely responsible for the GOP's debased state, along with evangelical holy warriors -- let's call them Christo-jihadists -- like Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed and James Dobson. In a reprise of Nixon's "Southern strategy," which used racist appeals to white Southerners to devastating political effect, Gingrich and the Christo-jihadists fired up the so-called values or social issues conservatives by ranting about guns, God and gays.

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[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. You beat me to it! This is a great article.

More:

"...That left only the base -- the culture warriors for whom the battle over "values" trumps everything else, the zealots who brook no compromise. The problem is, no political movement led by its most extreme elements can win. The right's culture warriors are too manifestly unhinged; their obsessive mean-spiritedness, more than their actual positions, leaves them out of the American mainstream, even out of the mainstream of the Republican Party. A movement figuratively led by the likes of Ann Coulter (or literally by Newt Gingrich, who is lurking on the sidelines, ready to run) cannot win a general election in this country. A red, white and blue banner inscribed with "Faggot!" may rally the hardcore, but most Americans will reject a politics based on hate and fear.

And they will do so in large part because they've been there and done that. The disastrous Bush presidency, which is certain to be recorded as one of the worst in American history, managed to stay politically afloat by making primal appeals to fear, revenge and patriotism. But like the boy who cried "wolf" -- or, in this case, "terrorism!" -- once too often, it has used up its fearmongering capital.

Episodes like the Coulter debacle make it all too clear, especially to the swing and independent voters and pragmatic Republicans who will decide the election, that the GOP's base (which, by the way, is what "al-Qaida" means in Arabic) is a rather scary group. The GOP is reaping what it has sown. It preached hatred, fear and resentment for years, it whipped up the troops with apocalyptic rhetoric, and now it has created a core constituency that only too obviously reflects that negativity. Indeed, the Republican base increasingly defines itself not by positive values, which a true conservatism would affirm and which could hold broad appeal, but only by its partisan hatreds..."

[Erika]

2. Coulter and the GOP show pure hatred and vindictiveness

of gays and liberals. A bunch of sick folks masquerading as Christians.

But they love Halliburton. Money rules, they drool.

[BobTheSubgenius]

3. Wonderful.

What a terrific, well-written article. I hope it's as prescient as it is eloquent and incisive.

[checks-n-balances]

4. K & R - A deal with the Devil, indeed!

Just when I think they can't go any lower, the "top" themselves with something else. Their sleaze is surpassed only by their vindictiveness toward the American people. God knows what we did as a nation to deserve their demonic policies, insane ideas and power grabs that really add up to a gradual coup d'etat. May they languish in hell, but first I hope we all live to see them suffer while still mortals.

[ThoughtCriminal]

5. I constantly have to deal with right-wingers

Coulter is not the fringe of the Republican party. To them, she is main-stream.

[OneBlueSky]

6. "conjuring up boogeymen has been a right-wing specialty since the days of the Know-Nothing movement"

I think we should start referring to Republicans as the Know-Nothings . . . it's an apt description of their political ideology -- both today and throughout their history . . .

"the entire basis of conservatism is the pathological fear that someone (generally a non-white someone), somewhere might get something from the government that they don't 'deserve'" . . .