Can John McCain Be Stopped?

Like most conservatives, I spent Super Tuesday curled in a fetal position in my bunker. The idea that John McCain will get the Republican nomination is beginning to sink in and it is more than many of us can bear.

Many conservatives hate John McCain even more than we hate Hillary Clinton. Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter have said that they might vote for Hillary if it came down to a choice between her and McCain. James Dobson the head of Focus on Family, released a statement outlining the reasons he could not support McCain, including McCain's opposition to a Constitutional amendment protecting marriage, his vote for embryonic stem-cell research, his opposition to tax cuts, his sponsorship of the campaign finance reform bill and his membership in the Gang of 14, which prevented the appointment of some conservative judges. Even worse, says Dobson, McCain "has a legendary temper and often uses foul and obscene language." Dobson is hoping that Dick Cheney will decide to run for President.

Townhall columnist Lee Culpepper believes that McCain doesn't have the character to be President. "None of us know for sure what McCain experienced during his time as a POW," wrote Culpepper. "All we know is that he survived and came home while many other POWs did not. What was it about McCain that was different? Was it family heritage or was it his proclivity for compromising to get what he wants?" It's a good question. What kind of compromises did McCain have to make to survive his brutal captivity in Vietnam? Perhaps if McCain had not survived being a POW that would have reassured conservatives that we can trust him. I'm sure Lee Culpepper wouldn't have made it back alive.

It's not just the possibility that McCain made some sort of deal with his captors in Vietnam and is actually a Manchurian Candidate that makes conservatives not trust him. McCain has consistently been soft on illegal immigration, the most important issue to conservatives today. Although McCain now says he realizes that Republican voters want border security first, he seems reluctant to support rounding up millions of illegal immigrants and deporting them and throwing thousands of people who employed them in jail, which is what most conservatives want. Although McCain has done some pandering to conservatives in this campaign, earning an endorsement from the late Jerry Falwell, for example, unlike Romney he seems to feel really bad about it, which worries us about his sincerity. McCain needs to show that he really has had a change of heart on immigration, perhaps by calling a Hispanic reporter "Macaca," for example.

Another issue that worries conservatives about McCain is torture. Conservatives believe that we are not torturing people enough, while McCain says that he is against it. Sure, he did capitulate to the Bush administration and worked out a "compromise" that would let them waterboard a few people, but it's clear that his heart really wasn't in it. Conservatives are glad that McCain not only supports the War in Iraq but wants us to be there for 100 years and his joke about bombing Iran reassures us that under a McCain administration, there might be more wars we could rally around. Maybe McCain would even settle a few old scores by invading Vietnam and doing it right this time. But it's difficult to see how we could win these wars, or the War on Terror, if we cannot torture more people.

If McCain is bad now, just wait until the general election when he goes even further to the left to appeal to independent voters. Will he change the name of the Straight Talk Express to the Gay Talk Express?

Some conservatives are hoping that it is not too late to stop McCain and they have thrown their support to Mitt Romney, but so far it hasn't worked. Romney would be doing a lot better if Huckabee dropped out. And he would be doing even better if Huckabee and McCain dropped out. Unfortunately, it's likely that both will stay in the race so he needs to make some changes. So far he has spent only $1.6 million per delegate, which is pretty insulting to a typical Republican delegate. Democrat delegates can be bought with donuts and a cup of coffee, but Republican delegates don't come so cheap. And although Romney has changed his positions on many issues to appeal to conservatives, he's going to have to do a lot more. He now opposes abortion, gay rights and illegal immigration, but he has remained stubbornly consistent when it comes to his religion. The base of the party thinks that Mormonism is a cult, which is why he has been having so much trouble getting the evangelical vote. If Romney announced that his views on religion had "evolved" the way his views on abortion did, and he left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and converted to Southern Baptist that might be the key to victory. (Update: Romney has announced he is pulling out of the race.)

If Romney can't save us from McCain, who can? Many conservatives supported Fred Thompson as the real conservative in the race. Unfortunately, once he announced he was running, he plummeted in polls. But now that he has dropped out of the race, many conservatives are looking at him again. He seems to do so much better in the polls when he is not actually campaigning, so there is a possibility he will have a late surge. If we could keep him on the ballot but make sure he promises to stay home, he could achieve an upset victory.

But while there still is a glimmer of hope that McCain will not get the nomination, most conservatives are resigning themselves to the idea that he will. If we are forced to make a choice between McCain and Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, what should conservatives do? John McCain's mother has said that conservatives should just hold their noses and vote for McCain and one company has introduced John McCain noseplugs to make it a little easier. Michelle Malkin is trying to rally her troops to vote for conservatives farther down the ballot in the hopes that someday one of these conservatives can be groomed to run for President, but many conservatives will probably be too deflated to summon the energy to get out of the house on election day.

Instead of voting to make things not quite as bad as they could be, however, a better strategy for conservatives would be to make things as bad as they possibly could be. One of the things we learned in Vietnam is that sometimes you have to destroy the village in order to save it. And the only way to save this country and the Republican Party at this point may be to destroy them. Though John McCain would destroy this country, he might not destroy it enough. So some patriotic conservatives have decided to become "suicide voters," pulling the lever for Clinton or Obama instead of McCain. I think this is a good plan and, taking a page from Malkin, conservatives should also vote for the most liberal candidates they can find in every contest in November. Let's hand over the entire government to the liberals and then see how the American people like it. They deserve it after treating us the way they have when conservatives have done so much for this country. And after a few years of liberal government, I'm sure they will come running back to conservatives, begging us to return to power. So from now on, I am going to be supporting the most liberal candidates I can find. That oughta show 'em.

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Technorati Tags: Jon Swift, Super Tuesday, John McCain, 2008 Election, Republicans, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, Mike Huckabee, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, Politics

Elizabeth Edwards Viciously Attacks Ann Coulter

Usually Chris Matthews' Hardball on MSNBC provides a welcome respite from the deterioration of political dialogue in this country. In recent weeks Matthews and his deferential commentators have discussed numerous topics that the liberal media patently ignores such as Fred Thompson's powerful musk and the frightening possibility that Hillary Clinton will paint the White House pink. So I was looking forward to spending a whole hour watching Matthews discuss the important issues of the day with Ann Coulter, who was promoting the paperback version of her book Godless, which is only 1,740 places behind Amazon's Number One non-fiction title A Tragic Legacy by Glenn Greenwald, who is not blonde or photogenic enough to appear on Matthews' show. Ann Coulter looked great despite her very cheap, Republican haircut and the fact that she apparently hadn't eaten in days.

But then Matthews played a terribly mean trick on Coulter, the beloved conservative pundit. It turns out he had agreed to let Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of Presidential candidate John Edwards, call in and confront Coulter without informing his guest beforehand. Coulter seemed shocked that Edwards even had a wife, since she had once called him a "faggot." Was her gaydar not working properly? she seemed to be wondering. Had all those men who had told her they were gay only done so to get her to leave them alone?

Sensing Coulter's vulnerability, Edwards then pounced, laying into Coulter for making personal attacks against her husband. Earlier that morning Coulter had said, "If I'm gonna say anything about John Edwards in the future, I'll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot," which was a line she had probably worked on for months to prepare. By sandbagging Coulter like this, Matthews gave her no time to think of a witty put-down of Elizabeth Edwards, a cutting reference to Edwards' cancer perhaps, and Coulter looked off-balance. It was terribly unfair to Coulter.

Relentlessly, Edwards pressed on with her cruel assault: "I'm asking you politely to stop, to stop personal attacks."

"You're asking me to stop speaking? 'Stop writing your columns. Stop writing your books,'" Coulter asked incredulously. Clearly, Coulter's career would be over if she could no longer use personal attacks. What else would she do? It would be like asking Picasso to stop painting or asking Paris Hilton to stop doing whatever it is she does that makes her famous. Isn't it hypocritical to run a campaign that is supposedly based on helping people rise out of poverty, and then to turn around and attempt to impoverish Coulter?

But Edwards wasn't finished. She then laid into Coulter for her jokes about their son's death in a car accident. Coulter had hilariously claimed in a 2003 column that Edwards had a bumper sticker on his car that said "Ask me about my son's death in a horrific car accident." Apparently, Elizabeth Edwards is one of those humorless liberals who can't take a joke.

"I'm the mother of that boy who died," Edwards said. "My children participate -- these young people behind you are the age of my children. You're asking them to participate in a dialogue that is based on hatefulness and ugliness instead of on the issues, and I don't think that's serving them or this country very well."

As the audience erupted into applause, Coulter could only repeat herself. "The wife of a presidential candidate is asking me to stop speaking," she said. Couldn't Matthews have paused for a commercial at that point to allow Coulter to huddle with her joke writers? Instead, we were left to watch the depressing spectacle of Coulter sputtering one-liners she has used so many times before. Is there anything more tragic than an aging comedian in front of a hostile audience desperately rehashing old material?

What was supposed to be friendly hour-long interview to help Coulter sell books then devolved into a personal jihad against Coulter as Matthews asked her to justify remarks about other candidates such as referring to Hillary Clinton's "chubby legs," without even providing the context of that phrase, losing all of the subtle nuance that Coulter had worked so hard to craft.

It's really sad the way Elizabeth Edwards has debased our political dialogue by confronting pundits with their own words and threatening their livelihoods. If John Edwards is elected President, this will just give his wife a bigger platform to use the language of hate against political commentators like Coulter who are only trying to make a living. If Coulter is silenced then all we will have left is Jules Crittenden, who is neither pleasing to look at nor particularly funny. America would only have itself to blame.

If Elizabeth Edwards accomplished anything with her unfair ambush of the unfortunate Coulter, she revealed the true agenda of the Edwards campaign. They want to replace the Two Americas we have now of rich vs. poor, a division that has served this country nicely for more than 200 years, with a different Two Americas: unemployed conservative attack dogs vs. everyone else. That is not the kind of America I would like to live in.

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Technorati Tags: Jon Swift, Ann Coulter, Elizabeth Edwards, John Edwards, Chris Matthews, Hardball, Liberal, Conservative, Media, Politics

Unfair to Don Imus

It's really hard to say anything anymore. Don Imus has been suspended for two weeks by CBS and MSNBC for referring to the black women who play on the Rutgers basketball team as "nappy-headed hos." Isn't this is terribly unfair? How was Imus to know that referring to black women as "nappy-headed hos" is now considered offensive? What other demeaning racist and misogynist stereotypes are now off limits and how do you find out what they are?

According to respected Newsweek journalist Howard Fineman, calling black women "nappy-headed hos" was perfectly acceptable until sometime last week. "You know, it's a different time," Fineman told Imus on his radio show. "And some of the stuff that you used to do, you probably can't do anymore. I mean, just looking specifically at the African-American situation. I mean, hello, Barack Obama's got twice the number of contributors as anybody else in the race." Apparently, because of Obama's recent fundraising success it is no longer acceptable to make certain racist jokes. I'm not sure how Fineman knows this. It's possible that there is an email list that alerts subscribers to what epithets are no longer acceptable in polite society and Imus is either not on the list or hasn't checked his email.

Imus probably thought that there was no problem with devaluing the accomplishments of black women with cute epithets. When he referred to New York Times journalist Gwen Ifill, who is an African-American woman, as "the cleaning lady," none of his friends in the media objected, so it must have been OK at the time. Tim Russert, who has had Ifill on Meet the Press and Ifill's fellow Times journalist Maureen Dowd have both appeared on Imus' show many times since he said that and as far as we know never mentioned to him that this was offensive, never thought they needed to defend their colleague. I'm sure if Dowd and Russert had thought there was something wrong with the remark, they would have refused to appear on Imus until he apologized. If it has only become offensive recently, at least since Barack Obama's fundraising numbers were released, then it's a little unfair to attack Imus for saying that now and not see his remarks in their historical context.

Although many are now attacking Imus, some of his friends are remaining loyal and sticking up for him. Imus' friend Boston Globe journalist Tom Oliphant appeared on Imus after he made these remarks to express "solidarity" with the shock jock. He pointed out how easy it is for someone to be talking about black people and slip into racial stereotypes. "Now, believe me, as you well know, I don't know beans about hip-hop culture or trash-talking, or what do you call those things where you run on forever? Riffs, or whatever," said Oliphant. "But even I could see the beginning of what appeared to me to be a riff. And the train went off the tracks, which, you know, can happen to anybody." I'm sure this kind of thing happens to Oliphant all the time. He'll be talking about black people, "riffing," and suddenly he'll go just a little too far and say something too racist. Luckily for Oliphant, when his train goes off the track and he accidentally makes racist remarks, he's not on the radio so it's not such a big deal.

What is happening to Imus is a little like what happened to Ann Coulter a few weeks ago. How could she possibly have know that it was now wrong to call someone a "faggot"? When did this word become an "f-word"? Is it tied somehow to the ratings for Will & Grace or the Oscar nomination for Brokeback Mountain, which Imus and his good friend Chris Matthews made fun of last year, referring to it as Fudgepack Mountain? Although I believe that making fun of gay people for being gay is still no problem in general, apparently Coulter, Isaiah Washington and Tim Hardaway didn't get the memo and had no idea that the word "faggot" had suddenly become unacceptable. Someone should have told them about this so that they would have been more careful.

I know what Imus and Coulter and their friends in the media must be feeling. If you can't refer to black people as "nappy-headed," to women as "hos" and "bitches" or homosexuals as "faggots" anymore, how do you refer to them? Could someone please let us know?

I think in order to avoid mistakes like this in the future, it might be helpful if blacks, women, gays (whoops! I almost wrote "faggots" by mistake!) and other oppressed groups compiled a list of offensive terms that are no longer funny. They might also want to set up a website that could be updated with new terms as they are added to the list, which pundits, comedians and shock jocks could check to make sure they aren't saying anything that will get them fired or cause them to lose lucrative commercial endorsements. I know I would be able to breathe a lot easier if I knew what demeaning stereotypes and insults I could and could not use.

I hope that Don Imus gets his job back after his two-week vacation. I know it will be difficult for him to talk about blacks, women and gays without making fun of the fact that they are black, female or gay so I hope people will cut him a little slack for the time being until he gets used to it. In the future when he talks about a women's basketball team whose players are predominantly black, he'll have to think of other things to talk about besides the fact that they are black women, but I'm sure he'll think of something. Perhaps he could also learn to limit his use of offensive stereotypes to white heterosexual men. Is there a list somewhere of terms that make fun of somebody just because they are white, heterosexual or male that he can use? Off the top of my head, I can't think of any but I'm sure there must be some.

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CPAC is Shocked--Shocked!--by Ann Coulter's Remarks

Conservatives attending this year's CPAC had no idea what was in store for them when Ann Coulter got up to speak. "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,'" she told the unsuspecting attendees, who were so taken aback by her surprising remarks that some of them exclaimed "Oh!" before they wildly cheered and applauded. Of course, they were just being polite and their response in no way implied that they weren't outraged by her comments. As hundreds of mostly young, college-age fans lined up to buy her books and get them signed, no doubt many of them were troubled by what she said, wondering if this would give people the wrong idea about conservatives.

Who knew that Coulter would say something that would give liberals an excuse to attack conservatives? Conservatives were just as shocked and appalled by her comments as they were last year at CPAC when she called Muslims "ragheads," recommended poisoning Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens and responded to a question about her biggest ethical dilemma by lamenting, "One time I had a shot at Clinton. I thought, 'Ann, that's not going to help your career.'" Many distanced themselves from what she said, just as they did at CPAC 2005 when she proposed a "New McCarthyism," explaining that the entire Harvard faculty should be fired for being traitors and that liberal books should be burned. When she speaks at CPAC next year, I wonder what outrageous things she will say, which conservatives will immediately denounce as in no way representing mainstream conservative thought. Certainly, she will give us something to talk about -- and condemn -- as she does every year. As CPAC Director Stacie Rumenap said last year, "For years, Ann's participation in CPAC has been the highlight for thousands of conservative grassroots activists. Her incendiary opinions on issues of the day resonate with our attendees, who always report that the CPAC experience would not be the same without an opportunity to be enlightened by the inimitable Miss Coulter."

Immediately, many shocked conservatives condemned her remarks, surprised that she would say something so intemperate when she is usually so funny. Blue Crab Boulevard is afraid it will cause a "backlash." Dean Barnett said her remarks were "Idiotic. Disgusting. Stupid. Moronic." Jules Crittenden called it "More bomb-throwing from someone who is all schtick." Dan Riehl accused her of "hijacking" the event. Even Red State said she should be "shunned." Next year when Coulter crosses the line again, you can be sure that conservatives will be ready to denounce her. Flopping Aces, who did such a bang-up job proving that Jamil Hussein doesn't exist, or does exist, I'm not sure which, was one of the few conservatives who defended her. Apparently, he didn't get the memo.

Some worry that Coulter's remarks will even affect the presidential race. John Hawkins at Right Wing News said that Coulter "deliberately put the presidential contenders and the other people attending CPAC in a bad light." Unfortunately the person who will suffer the most from what Coulter did is probably Presidential candidate Mitt Romney. "Unfairly, ex-MA Gov. Mitt Romney faces the biggest burden: he spoke right before Coulter and praised her… not knowing what she planned to say," Hotline said. How could he possibly have known Coulter would call John Edwards a faggot since the only thing she had said before even remotely like it was to call Al Gore a "total fag"? All Spin Zone goes so far as to say Coulter may have "torpedoed" Romney's presidential aspirations.

Michelle Malkin, who is particularly vigilant against incivility in public discourse, also weighed in. "A smattering of laughter," Michelle Malkin said, describing the reaction. "Not from this corner. Crickets chirping." On the tape of Coulter's remarks (available here in full), it's a bit difficult to hear the crickets chirping over all the laughter and cheering, but it's possible the microphones just weren't sensitive enough to pick them up. Last year Malkin also criticized Coulter's use of the word "ragheads." "'Ragheads' is not the word that immediately comes to my mind," she said. "Evildoers. Bloody murderers. Bastards. Yes. "Ragheads?" No."

For Malkin, any unfortunate remark a conservative makes is not reflective at all of conservatism, it merely reflects how hateful liberals are compared with conservatives. After Coulter made her comments about ragheads, she wrote. "The Left side of the blogosphere is working itself up into a lather, calling on conservatives to condemn Ann's remarks. But as I have noted many times, the Right is far more self-critical than the sanctimonious liberals who never say a peep about the routine hatred and poisonous ethnic/racial/religious identity politics exhibited by their own. We don't need your prodding." When Malkin gets hate email it is representative of the dark heart of liberalism, but when Coulter speaks in front of a group of conservatives that several presidential candidates have addressed, she is only speaking for herself. So every time that Coulter or others like her say things that conservatives would never say in public, it gives conservatives another opportunity to show how much better we are than liberals. As conservatives, we can all look forward to what outrageous thing Coulter will say at the next CPAC because it will give us a chance to show that we are not nearly as bad as she is and to accuse liberals of being insufferable hypocrites.

But unlike Malkin and most conservatives, Ed Morrissey at Captain's Quarters believes that Coulter's remarks and the cheering that followed were actually revealing of something more disturbing and not just an isolated incident by some bad apples, the way Abu Ghraib was. "At some point, Republicans will need to get over their issues with homosexuality," he said, which was almost as shocking as Coulter's statement. "Regardless of whether one believes it to be a choice or a hardwired response, it has little impact on anyone but the gay or lesbian person. We can argue that homosexuality doesn't require legal protection, but not when we have our front-line activists referring to them as "faggots" or worse. That indicates a disturbing level of animosity rather than a true desire to allow people the same rights and protections regardless of their lifestyles."

Of course, every conservative is aghast when Ann Coulter's jokes go wrong. To think they represent anything more than that is really going overboard. It was just a joke, after all, a joke gone horribly wrong perhaps, but not a career-killing joke like the one John Kerry made. Television bookings will probably slow for a while, but I'm sure they will pick up again once this little tempest has died down. Soon we'll be laughing at Coulter's delightful witticisms again--until the next time she says something reprehensible. In fact, just to be prepared ahead of time I'm going to write my piece condemning Coulter's remarks at 2008's CPAC right now so that I can post it as quickly as possible when it happens again next year.

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Jon Swift, Ann Coulter, CPAC, John Edwards, Michelle Malkin, Liberal, Conservative, Media, Politics