Faggot

That's a seriously ugly word up there. It stands out pretty clearly, doesn't it?

Doesn't it?

Hello?

Anyone?

Wow, it's just that I would have thought, after all that nonsense about a couple bloggers ... Y'know, Coulter was a featured speaker at the major event on the annual conservative calendar. She was introduced by a presidential candidate. She did use a vicious, bigoted slur to refer to another presidential candidate.

Ultimately there will be plenty of other sticks with which to beat Romney and all the other GOP candidates. The 2008 election is never going to won or lost by what Ann Coulter said at CPAC 2007.

But, reapeating some of what I said in the previous post, let's not be too surprised by the extremism and the hate on display. That's who these people are - maybe not all of them, but enough of them. And considering their moral obsession with demanding that Democrats denounce every semi-controversial statement made by anyone on the left - whether connected to the party and mainstream liberals or not - we can assume that the general conservative silence (albeit with a couple of notable exceptions) - indicates assent. These are indeed the kind of people who think it acceptable - indeed, applause-worthy - to publicly call a presidential candidate "faggot."

That's who they are.

UPDATE: I emailed Adam Nagourney, who's covering CPAC for the New York Times, to ask why he had omitted any mention of Coulter's remark. He replied:

> I was not there when it happened, having left the
> room to write a deadline story about the
> presidential candidates, which was what I had gone
> there to cover. Heard about it much later; will
> figure out what to do about it this morning. Thanks
> for writing.
>
> P.S. I'm pretty certain she was not introduced by
> Mitt Romney; he had left the room at the same time I
> did.

As to Romney's connection, I don't know if "introduced" would be the precise word, but Hotline's blog did report it this way:

Mitt Romney faces the biggest burden: he spoke right before Coulter and praised her... not knowing what she planned to say.

At any rate, we may yet hear more about this.

I'll look at CPAC in more depth later this weekend.

UPDATE #2: Nagourney covers the fallout at the Caucus (the Times' national political blog)

Labels: Ann Coulter, conservatives, CPAC, Mitt Romney

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 9:02 AM