June 06, 2006

06.06.06 and Ann Coulter

Ann Coulter is smart enough to know 06.06.06 is a good day to release her new book Godless. Now, I consider her a devil in the conservative movement, but there are occasions when she makes her point well without sounding like a bad stand-up commedian. Her interview with Matt Lauer on Today was one moment as documented by NewsBusters.org:

Right out of the box, Lauer invited Ann to buy into that logic:

"David Gregory said if you ask people what they care about they say Iraq and gas prices. Gay marriages are way down on the list, but that's what the president is talking about and what the Senate is taking up. Why?"

Coulter would have none of it:

"I don't know what people are talking about or how David Gregory knows that. But I do know that gay marriage amendments have been put on the ballots in about 20 states now and passed by far larger numbers than Bush won the election by."

Matt then hit Ann with a classic exemplar of perceived liberal truth - the musings of a WaPo columnist. Lauer:

"Here's how E.J. Dionne puts it in the Washington Post: 'The Republican party thinks its base of social conservatives is a nest of dummies who have no memories and respond like bulls whenever red flags are waved in their faces.' Do you agree with that?

Coulter: "That the base are dummies or that Bush thinks that?"

Lauer: "That he can wave a red flag and they will run to the polls to respond to him?"

Coulter: "They don't need to respond to him. He's not running again."

Lauer: "They want the voters to turnout in the mid-term elections. They don't want to lose control of the congress."

Coulter: "Maybe they want to do what the voters want. Whatever you can say about whether or not Bush has a mandate, the mandate against gay marriage is pretty strong. It passed by like 85 percent in Mississippi. Even in Oregon, and that was the state that the groups supporting gay marriage fixated on and outspent their opponents by like 40:1, it passed even there. There is a mandate against gay marriage."

Lauer: "Do you think George Bush in his heart really cares strongly about that issue?"

Coulter: "I don't know what anybody cares in his heart."

Lauer: "Would you take a guess?"

Coulter: "I know what Americans think because they keep voting, over and over and over again overwhelmingly they reject gay marriage. So why is that a bad thing for politicians to respond to what is overwhelmingly a mandate?"

"Coulter Won't Buy Into Lauer's Liberal Logic"

UPDATE: I'm no fan of Coulter and am as hard on her as anybody, but I wouldn't call her criticism of some Sep. 11 widows as "stomach-churning." [via Crooks and Liars]