Is anyone else there live blogging Ann Coulter or is there some way to get either a transcript or audio file of her remarks?

Try Erick Ericson at redstate.org

Having just walked through the space where this Coulter person is speaking, it clearing isn't her ideas that all of the greasy-haired, pimply faced young men are crowding around straining to get into the hall.

It is a shame that ideas and debate are now getting lost at CPAC over some fake-blonde who happens to have a good writer.

I'm glad somebody else thinks so. And, Robin, in the right light you look just like Greer Garson to me.

Exfratman nails it. Coulter's rhetoric makes it hard to discuss important issues seriously. And since it's the country and its future I care about, and not any particular political party, I think she's a liability in the longer run for conservatives, no matter how much she fires up the true believers in the short run.

Dave - thanks!

Agreed - Although her satire is enjoyable to some dedicated conservatives, it certainly is not condusive to dialogue with liberals, nor does it make us friends - not many people would want done unto us what Coulter does unto others.

thanks for agreeing. and pardon the typpos. this moble thing is too small for my fingers to type.

robin is right (or maybe that should be correct ;-)) this coulter woman is all flash and does nothing to help the cause or further the debate about where our country is and should be going. Her satire is just the product of a so-so writer and her appeal is the product of her hairdresser and her personal stylist.

I'm tired of people thinking that highly-polished media pundits are deep thinkers or potential leaders. fine, she's found a way to make money. but for all that's good and meaningful, don't present her as a leader and thinker of the movement!

on a more fun note, i understand that WONKETTE is down in blogger's corner. now that's somebody to definately go out and party with!

A truer comment never was made. See MY BLOG:http://thoughtfulidiot.blogspot.com/ for my thoughts on this topic. Such a waste of time and energy this CPAC thing. Such promise and so little performance.

Look, the point is Coulter is hot. Lets not lose sight of that. Yeh, she's crazy and has no sense of decency or decorum. If she were a democrat she'd be a senator from California, thats for sure.

Rebecca, you said:

..."not many people would want done unto us what Coulter does unto others"

Actually, that's been happening for over 20 years now. Which explains something about Coulter's popularity, whether one likes her or not.

As for having more dialogue with liberals... that's not really a smart goal. The real target of political dialogue is the uncommitted middle, as it always has been - and of course, that's exactly where Coulter's style is most damaging.

Her CPAC speech may have been a good example (I'd like to see a transcript before passing judgment, as even Robin's next article is sketchy). But for my money, anyone dumb enough to define aggressive promotion of conservatism and holding liberals accountable for their positions ("Attack. Define. Destroy.") as "The New McCarthyism"... is absolutely a liability. For one thing, that's not what McCarthy was doing.

As for making "treason" as unpopular as "racism" is... right now "racism" means "anyone who disagrees with the liberal left." I'm not exactly sure how making "treason" into "anyone who disagrees with conservatives" is helpful. Especially if you see the issue of re-establishing loyalty to country as an important one.

I see a cultural counterattack as a useful initiative. I see re-establishing the importance of loyalty to one's country as an important initiative. I think defining the second as a conversation about "treason," (which is specifically defined in the U.S. Constitution, folks, look it up) and linking it to the first initiative, is a good way to tarnish both efforts.

Ann strikes me as being kind of like steroids for conservatism - feels good for the first little while, and then you look in the mirror one day and start noticing the side-effects....

And Mark - yeah, she's hot. But give me Mona Charen any day. In the long run (and politics is all about the long run) I'd rather have a spokesperson with a tight case than a tight sweater.

Ideally, of course, you want both. But if that worked all the time Hollywood wouldn't be full of so many nutbars, now would it?

Ace liveblogged her comments -- before his sit went kerplut, that is.

It totally escapes me how anyone could call Coulter "hot". Not only physically, but every time she speaks I grit my teeth. There's no bigger turnoff than stupid partisan bile.

Anyway, what a laugh. With what conservatives have had to put up with for so long, the surprise is that Coulter is the only one doing her schtick -- and that she's so marginalized wrt real debate.

The whole 'epater les PC' stuff on the right can be sophomoric, but settling into grave seriousness hardly helps either.

I agree with Matt ... hot she's not! All she is somebody who seems to be a bottomless money pit for a hair colorist and a personal shopper.

It might be different if she had a mind or a thought of her own. But just giving the same old tired speech over and over (with even the same jokes) and being a monkey to repeat every partisan barb that is an applause line. Ya gotta think about just what intelligence lies under all that peroxide hair.

Is she really any more grating than Al Franken or Michael Savage? Male partisan hacks are just accepted as pars for the idiot course, but females are attacked personally, and often by both sides. Some people still fear assertive women, and even fairly serious ones like Susan Estrich or Peggy Noonan get hit with the B word.
If its a choice between Anna Quindlin reminding us of the alleged moral authority squirting out a couple of puppies has given her, and Eleanor Clift duking it out with the best of em, i'll take the viper tongue every time.
That happens to turn me on about Coulter, I like the cut of her jib.

Is she really any more grating than Al Franken or Michael Savage?

Not really, but then I don't much care for them either.

"Not really, but then I don't much care for them either."

Fair enough. But if you run into Ann, tell her i'm willing to make a decent woman of her. Mmmmmm Coulter...

So, Joe, when does the weekly WoC Hot-or-Not series go online, now that Robin did the set-up shot?

As for me: Not.

Well, I posted this in the next article first, but there seems to be more talk in this post. So....

Did she really use the phrase "new McCarthyism", or is that your poetic license, Robin?

Her words seem terribly cavalier... and either a) a complete disregard of the effects of McCarthy, or b) an endorsement of his actions. In other words, exactly what we have come to expect from Ann Coulter. I agree totally with Robin... she is a net negative for conservatives, as she completely destroys civil dialogue with her take-no-prisoners aggressiveness.

Proposed: that Ann Coulter and Michael Moore share many prejudices against their respective opposition, as well as many strategic and tactical methodologies. Discuss.

Catfish

Who is worse....

Joe McCarthy, who cost what we now know, a few communist spys their govt jobs.

Or Joe Stalin, who cost 10s of millions their lives ?

Was it wrong to call the most evil of all evils, evil ?

The most evil of all evils in the history of planet earth, should not be opposed ?

The verona transcripts and the russian archives vindicate McCarthy

Despite what your leftist brainwash by those communist in achedamia that praise KimJong and hate america have taught you.

Whats it like to learn that everything you thought you knew was a lie, and that you grew up the tool of the most evil of all evils on earth?

Catfish, she really did call for a new McCarthyism, verbatim.

Raymond, there has been a lot of evil in the world's history. Some from the left, some from the right, some from people for whom we don't have political labels.

As for me and my family, we lost a lot of family members under Stalin, but I would not be willing to limit my critique to communism alone.

Definitely HOT. Her bitchy, take-no-prisoners attitude is part of what makes her so hot. I don't really take her ideas or rhetoric too seriously, but she can kick my ass any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

I'll remind our readers that lots of people put Steven Tyler and Kid Rock in the 'hot' category, too. Tastes vary, and aren't we all lucky that's so? It makes our own participation in the dating and influence games so much easier.

Ann has a shtick. Like Michael Moore, her shtick works, as proven by the fact that she too has an audience. Like Michael Moore, the next question (and we need to ask that "next question") is about their proper level of influence, and what we ought to encourage. Obviously, that's a whole different ball of wax.

As for the "New McCarthyism" quote, I have no transcript, no body language, and no tone to go on. Was it satire, along the lines of "maybe if that's what they keep saying, we should give it to them and see how they like it when reality matches their words for a change" - or was she dead serious?

Robin can certainly give us her impression... personally, I'd like CPAC to release a transcript and video if they have one, so we can all judge for ourselves and debate from a common set of facts. Right now, we don't have that - and while other attendees' impressions have limitations, I'd be interested in hearing how many of them thought she was serious.

Say, Raymond, let's see a list of Communists Joe McCarthy chased out of the government. Don't bother with Alger Hiss, he predated McCarthy.

What made McCarthyism exceptionally vile is that he used Senatorial Immunity to slander any number of non-Communists, mostly for his own political purposes, I suppose. If he stumbled across any genuine security threats, it was the merest coincidence.

It's also true he worked long and hard on behalf of anti-Communist German war criminals. But then, Raymond, you have a soft spot for brown shirts, don't you?

Robin..

to leftism what compares .. what comes close, what comes within even a galaxy.

the left have murdered almost 4 times the 43 million battle dead of all wars.

Nothing comes close to the left ,,, nothing even registers

Andrew

Hitler was a socialist, Deng Xiaoping, a socialist

If you are just to the right of PolPol but still 900 miles to the left of me, that does not mean you are not of the left.

Typical leftist Lie that Hitler was about Constitutional rights and the free market Low taxes and limited goverment

Nor was he looking back to the days of fuedal serfs and comic opera princes

No, Hitler was a radical, a Capitlaist Roader socialist

And the fake history about McCarthy, vindicated McCarthy, has been written by the left

Left = Lies we know that now.

Joe, something she has said for a while, giving in to the left in the hopes they will like us never works .. they never hold up their end we get screwed, and painted as demons anyway.

Well, Raymond, I suppose if anybody who ever did anything bad was a socialist, and therefore a Communist (what exactly would a Capitalist road socialist be?—you don't realize the irony of adopting Maoist terminology to condemn others, do you?), then Joe McCarthy must have found some Communists.

But on Planet Earth, he generally slandered a lot of non-Communists. Or do you have some fresh new evidence that Gen. George Marshall was a Communist (or is that an American-road Socialist?) that you would like to share with us?

Well, Raymond, I suppose if anybody who ever did anything bad was a socialist,

On the scale and magnatude of socialists ? no, the left are in a class by themselves, 174 Million Murdered. thats many times the 43 Million Combat killed of all wars.

and therefore a Communist

Wrong again, Hitler, Deng Xiaoping, Benito, fierce nationalists, as compared to international socialism, indoctrinare disputes among leftists are the norm in factionary infighting for power, indoctrinare factional purges in Cambodia made the Cultural revolutionaries in China look tame.

Latter come to power socialists had looked at the failures of the russian commune system and the upheavals, this recalibration of approch gave rise to the "Capitalist Roaders", of China, the Facists of Italy, the national Socialists of Germany, and even the "Third Way" the latest term coined By Gorbachov Clinton and Blair.

(what exactly would a Capitalist road socialist be?—you don't realize the irony of adopting Maoist terminology to condemn others, do you?),

First you ask what that is, then admit that you know what that is, funny stuff

And as opposed to who's terminalogy/idology? if not from the actors themselves then who? Bzzt... you lose again.

then Joe McCarthy must have found some Communists.

Yes, the panel of which McCarthy was a part did find communists in the state department, Hollywood, achedamia. The russian archives document the KGB's losses. and no, we didnt get them all.

But on Planet Earth,

Earth to Andrew, Earth to Andrew, see how easy that is ?

he generally slandered a lot of non-Communists.

Says who, you ? commie dreaming leftist historians ?

Or do you have some fresh new evidence that Gen. George Marshall was a Communist (or is that an American-road Socialist?) that you would like to share with us?

pssst. FDR himself, was a socialist, he tried to pack the supreme court and other things to impliment a socialist agenda.

In America, we still had strong consitutional limits and the realpolitic of the time was hardly ripe to impliment the Socialist States of America.

But its not for want of them trying.

The link between leftism and mass murder is the devalued rights of the individual.

The state that is all powerfull, is well, all powerfull.

Its the all powerfull state that is the danger, and leftism requires the all powerfull state.

Thats totaly unAmerican and perverse to the American principle of the liberty of the single person, who retains rights that are beyond the demands of the mob.

All the mass murder holocaust states of 174 million skulls have been socialist, only the socialist mass murdered as matter of policy, setting up death quotas.

Only the left, only those that called themselves socialist.

Its that simple

Lets pick a few excerpts from the volumous material available to underline my point.

The new documents "lend support," in Klehr's words, to the already substantial evidence that shows the presence of Communists in a number of New Deal Washington government agencies. Revisionist historians have described this Communist presence as nothing more than "Marxist study groups." The new evidence, however, doesn't permit such a benign interpretation. Of particular interest are the Ware cell in the Agricultural Adjustment Administration and several advisers to Wisconsin Sen. Robert LaFollette's Civil Liberties subcommittee of the Senate Education and Labor Committee.

Revisionist historians and the left long have denounced such figures as Benjamin Gitlow and Louis Budenz as dishonest and unreliable when it came to testimony both men gave after they left the party about their activities as CPUSA members. But far from unreliable and dishonest, the new documents show that both Gitlow and Budenz told the truth about CPUSA activity in the United States.

This is true, too, of the testimony of Elizabeth Bentley, who turned herself in to the FBI in 1945 and in 1948 confessed before a Senate committee to Communist Party membership and being a Soviet spy. Bentley cited 40 people by name - Communists all and federal employees, Bentley said - with whom she had worked in Washington as a party activist.

The media quickly portrayed her as flaky and unreliable. Newsweek dismissed her as a "New England spinster i wearing slinky black silk." (The parallels with Clinton accuser Paula Corbin Jones are striking. The press used Bentley's dowdiness to render her flaky in the public eye. Jones' "big hair" has been joked about, as has her alleged residence in a trailer park, which evidently makes her flakiness an indisputable fact.)

A pattern we have seen continually from the leftist media.

Nonetheless, the new evidence - and particularly the very recent release of the Venona intercepts - makes it clear that Bentley, too, was telling the truth, says Klehr.

Asked to what extent the Communist underground network influenced American policy, Klehr responds with one of history's great "what if's." In this case, it's what if Henry Wallace had become president of the United States, which he would have had FDR died a year earlier. Wallace served as vice president during FDR's third term and later ran for president on the Progressive ticket in 1948 with Communist Party support.

Klehr notes that Wallace once mentioned that if he'd been president he would have made Laurence Duggan, a State Department specialist on Latin America, his secretary of state and, for his treasury secretary, Wallace said he would have chosen Harry Dexter White, a highly placed treasury official influential in deciding post-World War II American economic policy.

Both Duggan and White were communists whose politics long were suspected or known but about whose party activities more is being learned, says Klehr. Duggan and White's elevation to a Wallace Cabinet never happened, of course. But that their names were bandied by a former U.S. vice president as possibilities for top posts underlines their closeness to power and the role secret Communists had come to play in Washington affairs.

Whole thing

Btw, Nixon sat on the same panel with McCarthy, if you want to know why the left hated him so, before he had done a thing ...

Ironic eh ? the Watergate breakin and coverup in todays context, in light of the Clinton standard and papers in my Pants Sandy Burglar, would not merit so much as a yawn today.

At least he wasnt a F&%#% socialist. and he had the love of America to step down rather than drag the country thru the mud.

Raymond, you still haven't justified McCarthy's claim that Gen. Marshall was a traitor. And I don't intend to defend Harry Dexter White, except White was dead before McCarthy began his big crusade. (You're confusing the charges of McCarthy himself with the activities of the HUAC in general.)

McCarthy was congenitally incapable of distinguishing among Soviet spies, Communist Party members, communist sympathizers, and liberal dupes. He also was unable to understand that there were plenty of anti-communists (including some people who had once been communists or sympathizers themselves) who simultaneously opposed both communism and McCarthyism. McCarthy had a habit of pillorying people such as James Wechsler or Theodore Kaghan, once close to the CPUSA but by the 1950s ardent anti-communists[.]

McCarthy was congenitally incapable of distinguishing among Soviet spies, Communist Party members, communist sympathizers, and liberal dupes.

Something i have diffuculty with too ...

Lenin or his usefull idiot ? you often cant tell.

And to me, distinctions, without a difference.

Yes, I well believe that you can't distinguish between Soviet spies, liberal "dupes", and even liberal anti-Communists. And someone who thinks FDR was a socialist probably thinks Gen. Marshall was a Communist and a traitor.

I don't really know what to recommend for you, while you wait for that brain transplant.

And someone who thinks FDR was a socialist ..

You dispute this ?

You just keep stepping in it andrew