Bingo! And that is the heart of my objection to your comments: historically the Left has destroyed anyone who gets in the way, and this is all the more easily done when people who should know better rush to bolster and justify their hyperventilating.
We have made a great deal of progress since 1980 of shedding the extremist image the Left painted conservatives with between the HUAC hearings in the 1940's and the Nixon era.
Oh, Good Lord. Please stop talking about "history." It's very clear you either were born yesterday, are a black propagandist, or a dope. HUAC investigated and uncovered real spies. The only reason HUAC has gotten a black eye is because the repeated lies of Leftist propagandists--WHICH YOU ARE REPEATING--have been left unchallenged by conservatives. I absolutely defy you to produce one example of one historically disputed claim on which HUAC was mistaken and the Left was correct. ONE. Until you can, please stop holding forth on a topic about which you clearly not only know nothing, but are repeating malicious untruths.
Second, Nixon was not a conservative. Never was. Nixon started the EPA, revenue sharing, negative income tax, wage and price controls, and OSHA, just to name a few. The ideological right (which did NOT exist at the time of HUAC or McCarthy) carried water for him because--like G.W. Bush, who is also no conservative--he was on the right side of the great conflict of his time.
I much prefer the style of someone like Rush Limbaugh, who has been one of THE strongest, most popular conservative voices for a long time. Rush never descends into the gutter. He is hard-hitting and effective without being cruel and acidic.
Rush is the indispensable conservative, but you're wrong about his never "descending into the gutter," if that gutter is defined by is critics. Exactly the same things have been said about Rush over the course of his career, but luckily, people haven't fallen all over themselves to agree with his detractors. And whatever else, you will NOT catch Rush Limbaugh jumping on a band wagon to trash a conservative with less than satisfactory social skills making a valid point. He understands as well as anybody that the left throws their hateful spaghetti at all of us, and he is not going to give them any help in making it stick.
If you like Coulter, fine. I don't -- and am amused by the fact that some people seem hell-bent on forcing folks with my opinion of her to either join the club or go away and shut up.
Actually, I don't like Coulter all that much. I find her personal manner off-putting, don't think she's especially attractive--though this is clearly of overhwelming importance to her--and I think P.J. O'Rourke is much more intelligent and humorous satirist. That said, I take her side in the current debate for the same reason I would take McCarthy's, or HUAC's, or Nixons. All of these people were demonized by the Left, and all of them were right in their opposition to Communism, and, like Coulter, their character deficiencies were nowhere near as egregious as those of many Leftists who continue to be adored long after their treachery or treason have been revealed.
A person wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt has made a far more outrageous and offensive public political remark than anything Coulter has ever said or written. Let's bring that point up whenever some lib/lefty wants to talk about Ann, or Nixon, or McCarthy. The Left is going to do their usual job tearing us down. Stop helping them with their bloodwork.
Nicely said.
"I find her personal manner off-putting, don't think she's especially attractive--though this is clearly of overhwelming importance to her..."
Not true from my experience. But a minor point.
Much of what she does fashion-wise I think is a statement. It is meant as a stick in the eye to all those who think only liberals can try to be be hip, chic, glam...
Or wickedly (even nastily) funny.
And it clearly drives the liberals up the wall -- and, sadly, many here as well.
The media has no problems with putting conservatives on TV or in their magazines, as long as they portray themselves like Tucker Carlson, George Will or Ben Stein.
But they consider hipness their right.
Whatever else Coulter has done, she has shown that you can be hip, witty and attractive -- and still be conservative.
Don't think that doesn't have an effect. If it didn't, the left wouldn't be so jealous of their turf.
(And, of course, I'm sure you already are aware of this. PJ O'Rourke sort of led this movement, at least for males in some ways.)
In your response to my statement above, you have demonstrated a common problem here on FR (and probably other web forums). People all-to-frequently do not respond to what is actually stated.
The above merely brackets a period of time between the 1940's and the 1970's, and notes how conservatives were painted by the Left as extremists during that period. Yet somehow you leaped from that simple bracket of time to your paragraphs which begin, "Oh, Good Lord," and "Second, Nixon was not a conservative."
It might help if you stow your impulse to insult and look at the actual statement. The HUAC hearings began in the 1940's, did they not? The Nixon era was a very difficult one for Republicans and conservatives, was it not? In the period of time bracketed by those events, conservatives were branded by the Left as extremists, were they not?
So what's your problem?
Right on, Fred. Well said.