Coulterized Conservatives

[Hamlette]

http://www.slate.com/id/2149119/?nav=fix

Coulter's outrageous views and her poisonous rhetoric . . . rendered her anathema to the respectable right. Over time, though, the Coulter style has gradually crept into conservatism's mainstream. Maybe it's sheer greed; Coulter has certainly demonstrated that extremism sells books. Maybe it's the reward structure of cable-news shows, which love to sic right-wing mad dogs on seemingly clueless moderate liberals. But I'm inclined to think the main driving force is the bankruptcy of contemporary conservatism as represented by the Bush administration. An aggressively interventionist foreign policy has stumbled badly; a sharp cutback in taxes has failed to bring prosperity to the middle class; and, since Hurricane Katrina leveled New Orleans, citizens have come to regard governmental incompetence less as a reason to vote Republican than as a reason to hold Republicans responsible for indifferent stewardship. Things have gotten so bad that the GOP may conceivably lose control of both the House and the Senate in the coming midterm congressional elections.

When you don't have anything new to say, and what you've been saying in the past no longer has much plausibility, you have three choices. You can shut up. For conservative commentators, this is inconceivable, not to mention financially ruinous. You can re-examine your premises. This is not the conservative style. Or you can pump up the volume.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. It's a process of sublimination..... everywhere you look, you see

homeland, fear, terrah, war, threat levels, threat matrix, we are being conditioned to be what we have become.

[Rockstone]

2. Its the poisining of public discourse

The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy. They use isolationism as a slogan to conceal their own selfish imperialism. They cultivate hate and distrust of both Britain and Russia. They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.
http://newdeal.feri.org/wallace/haw23.htm

[Hamlette]

5. and when you call them on it, the Coulterize the conversation

and dismiss us as "liberals" "Bush haters" "unpatriotic" etc. We can never discuss the propblems we have because they call us names. That is the poisoning of the public discourse that has been the most damaging to our country.

[jhrobbins]

3. I love this country, but we are really going through a....

protracted adolescence. Europe has gone through these growing pains many centuries ago and in a time when the missteps weren't broadcast around the world in seconds. Like I said, I love America, but we are thinking about perhaps relocating to the 'old country'. Is this a cop-out?

[TahitiNut]

4. Coulter offers absolutely no redeeming social value with her vitriol.

She offer no perspective, no ideas, no suggestions, and nothing whatsoever of any value to public discourse. She's as welcome as a shit-filled diaper on a buffet table - something only a sociopath could enjoy. She's not 'extreme' since she has no valid viewpoint of any kind.

[valerief]

6. Your imagery is quite vivid and entertaining. n/t