Every now and then Republican writer and speaker Ann Coulter pens something that catches my eye. I’ve never been a big fan of Coulter’s. She’s a colorful and successful person, to be sure, but it’s not uncommon for those who work at high levels in the commentariat to exhibit annoyingly confusing inconsistencies. One day Ann is against Mitt Romney — he can’t win. The next day she thinks Romney is our only hope.
People change their minds all the time, and that’s fine, but when I can’t tell whether a person is pro-life or pro-abortion, they start to lose me. When I sense a real confusion on the part of someone who is supposed to be an important thinker, about something as elementary as the problem with the identity politics of sex-centric special “rights,” I usually stop spending much time perusing their writings.
The Wikipedia page about Coulter is tough to get through without a few laughs. She has effectively made herself an issue — and that helps her earn a living. My interest is more in the actual debate over substantive policy, and not about the personalities living in punditland.
Recently I did click on one of Coulter’s Townhall.com posts titled, “Young people don’t change – Neither does the N.Y. Times.” She opens in typical — what I call — “flighty Ann” fashion:
Let me begin by saying that I think the only issue in the 2014 election should be Obamacare. In fact, that should be the only issue in every election until it’s repealed.
I also think all Republican candidates should be trained with shock collars and cattle prods to automatically respond, upon hearing some combination of the words “abortion,” “rape” and “incest”: “Yes, of course there should be exceptions in the case of rape or incest, and I also support giving rapists the death penalty, unlike my Democratic opponent, who wants to give rapists the right to vote. Now, back to what I was saying about Obamacare …”
Forget spending, debt, energy development, and all foreign policy. I guess that’s supposed to be a serious point made humorously. Whatever. Ha ha. Death penalty for the rapist. Great. Hilarious. Oh, but also the death penalty for the unborn baby. That Coulter chick is a scream.
Normally I would’ve stopped reading, but I wanted to see what she had to say about young people — and I was rewarded for my perseverance. She writes about the fact that the New York Times “ran into some kids at CPAC who are ‘pro-free market on fiscal issues and libertarian on social ones.'”
Here’s what comes next from Ms. Coulter:
[Y]oung people are idiots. I love them, I was one once myself — but they’re idiots. We’ll be interested in their opinions on the basic rules of civilization as soon as they have one of three things: a household to run, a mortgage or school-aged children. Being in college is like living in Disneyland.
I couldn’t agree more. In the early 1990s we were told the next generation was pro-abortion and pro-lifers had might as well hang it up. About a decade later polls were showing that the pro-life position was the majority view due in no small part to young people.
Now we’re hearing the same old garbage about the kids being anti-religious liberty (which is what you are if you’re pro-”gay marriage”). The fact is, the kids have never been taught what the nature of homosexuality (LGBTQOMGWTFBBQs, etc.) is, and they certainly are ignorant about the First Amendment’s protection of our God given right of religious liberty. They can become teachers once they’ve become educated.
Nevertheless we have to address this topic because anti-deep thinkers continue to fall for the same old argument from the liberal press. It happens over and over, year after year.
What follows in Ann Coulter’s column is of value, and yes, quite humorous. She proceeds to list example after example of when and how we’ve been told that Republicans should “drop the social issues.” It’s tiresome only for those of us who have been paying attention. Sadly, too few people are, even on the political right. Here is her intro to the list and just the first four on it:
[I’ve] been reading that same column in The New York Times every few months for the last 20 years. Whether it’s abortion, gays, God or drugs, Times reporters are like bloodhounds in sniffing out Republicans — often kids — who are “pro-free market on fiscal issues and libertarian on social ones.” If something has been trending for decades without ever really catching on, it’s probably not about to sweep the nation.
In 1988, the Times claimed Congress had “lost its taste for the social agenda” and quoted Sen. Warren Rudman of New Hampshire — one of the GOP’s last liberals and, consequently, the Times’ lodestar for all things Republican — saying that people like himself “felt deeply” that the social issues should be dumped.
In 1989, the Times was all atwitter about three typical Republicans who opposed the GOP’s pro-life position. These “stalwart Republicans” were: Barbara Gimbel of Manhattan (Gimbels department store heiress), Barbara Mosbacher of Manhattan (banking heiress) and Pauline Harrison of Manhattan (DuPont heiress). All vowed not to support any pro-life candidates — except Harrison, “because she had recently been appointed to the Republican State Committee representing the 66th Assembly District on Manhattan’s East Side.”
There’s a reason you never hear the expression, “As goes Manhattan’s Upper East Side, so goes the nation.”
In 1990, the Times heralded the formation of a pro-choice Republican group, consisting primarily of Ann Stone and her husband, Roger.
In 1992, the Times missed the masses of socially conservative delegates at the Republican National Convention, but somehow bumped into several people who wanted to drop the family and God references.
“The year on the calendar changes, but the cliches stay the same,” Coulter writes, and adds examples from 1996, 1999, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2009, and 2012. She wraps it up with this:
Luckily, like every generation before them, someday, young people will eventually grow up and discover that you can’t have conservative economic policies without also having conservative social policies. Imagine their embarrassment when they realize that a free society is impossible without lots of stable, married, two-parent families raising their children in safe, drug-free neighborhoods.
How about not letting them vote until they’re at least old enough not to be on their parents’ health insurance?
Don’t ask me why she thinks “the father of ‘gay marriage,’” Mitt Romney, is a genuine social conservative. Setting that aside, Coulter’s column — and her concluding points — are excellent.
To read more about the connection between the economic and social issues, click here.
