Politics

Election 2008: Why Ann Coulter Attacked and Failed to Stop John McCain

The Real Truth About Republican Propaganda in Presidential Election 2008

Written by Gaurav Bhola, MSM, Managing Editor & Community Manager on February 8, 2008 4:22 pm EST

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Anyone who watches Fox News knows about Ann Coulter. She has built a career on being infamous for caustic remarks, fraudulent commentary, and shameless self-promotion. She has built a solid career in the conservative-Republican political arena as a political expert. However, outside of certain sections of an insulated conservative cabal her merits as an expert and author of any hue, political or not are dubious at best.

She has been outed by pragmatist people in the media as a political charlatan, Al Franken being the most prominent. Her authorship is full of arguments, many without any factual foundations and her sentiments hollow. During the May 14, 2004 debate between Al Franken and Ann Coulter at The Connecticut Forum, Al Franken pointed out the fallacies of her positions and dubious arguments. He brought to the forefront her dubious allegations in her writings as out-and-out lies. Watch the You Tube debates and see for yourself.

The You Tube debates give you a clearer view of her merits. It is a well-established fact that she is simply an attack dog for the Republican Party and its fringe conservative right-wing, a propaganda tool; she is the Rush Limbaugh of Television. So why was this attack dog unleashed by her conservative masters to attack John McCain? Why did Ann on January 31, 2008 during the Hannity & Colmes Show on FOX, announce that she would vote for Hillary Clinton if John McCain was the Republican nominee.

Of course the next day the print, electronic, and online media picked up the story and ran with it. They sensationalized the unsensational story without ever analyzing what the statement meant and why she said it. Here is where I will fill-in the gaps the mainstream media failed to do. The media simply parroted her claims, nothing else. Even the so-called pundits failed to understand the underpinnings of her statement.

This is the true meaning and motivation of her statement:

1) She wanted to portray John McCain as a liberal, more liberal than Hillary Clinton, a Democrat, inasmuch that she was willing to cross party lines to vote for a person that the Republicans have jealously envied (including her husband) and targeted since Bill Clinton’s administration.

2)She was doing the bidding of her conservative masters in neutralizing John McCain’s potential ascendancy as the Republican Presidential Candidate nominee

3)She wanted to embed in the mind of the Republican voters ahead of Super Tuesday that John McCain didn’t share their conservative views

4)She was building upon the propaganda machinery put in motion by the conservatives to support Mitt Romney as their candidate

5)She was doing it to garner free media promotion for herself (and the feeble media complied)

But what I find odd is that the conservative Republicans had three presidential candidates to choose from and they chose to support Romney:

Mitt Romney: a Mormon, has supported the pro-choice and gay rights movements as former Governor of Massachusetts

John McCain: a conservative Republican party stalwart

Mike Huckabee: a conservative Christian Baptist preacher and former Governor of Arkansas

The conservatives had earlier attacked, Mitt Romney as a Mormon and a liberal, remember he had to defend in a forum his Mormon faith (a la J.F.K.) to assuage the Republican Christian base.

Article:
Romney, Eye on Evangelicals, Defends His Faith

I find it quite strange that all of the sudden their critiques of Romney changed to flattery before Super Tuesday’s Republican Presidential primaries. What was the motivation for the 180 degree gravitational change towards Romney?

To get the answer, we must go back to Bush’s failed Iraq War policy. George Bush was earlier seeking Republican elected officials in Congress to publicly endorse his cause of staying the course in Iraq. He made overtures to McCain, and McCain was ensnared. It is well known in DC circles that Bush and McCain dislike each other, so why did McCain risk his credibility to embrace a failed war and a failed Iraq policy? Remember the vile things the Bush Presidential campaign did in South Carolina to Senator McCain during the 2000 Presidential election. McCain Smear Campaign:
The Anatomy of a Smear Campaign
What Bush did to McCain in the 2000 S. C. primary

There are well-founded rumors that Bush and McCain struck a deal behind the scenes:
Bush would help McCain get the conservative political and financial support for his 2008 presidential bid, in return for McCain’s support of Bush’s Iraq War policies. A great post by Steve Beenen reveals McCain’s flip flops on Iraq and more:
McCain changes his position on Iraq (again)

McCain has held up his part of the bargain, so has Bush, you will see, as McCain’s presidential campaign continues, he will get the support of conservatives.

Why not Huckabee?

Mike Huckabee has the most conservative credentials out of all the Republican Presidential Candidates.
Even with these credentials, he was never seen by the Republican Party as a viable electable candidate. However, he stunned the party with his level of success on Super Tuesday even with limited financial campaign resources. Even with his successes, put simply, he is not seen as electable by the party, thus he has limited support within the party.

Herein, you never saw the Republican propaganda machine throw their support behind him as they did with Romney. You never heard the conservative radio talk shows regurgitate the usual Republican Party talking points. You never saw Rush Limbaugh espouse the same reverence for Huckabee as he did for Romney.

Why Mitt Romney?

The answer is money! Plain and simple, money! John McCain had run out of money early in his campaign and he didn’t have the financial support necessary to mount a successful long-term bid against Democratic Presidential Candidates Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. This stigma applied to Mike Huckabee as well, that he couldn’t raise enough money for a sustainable campaign.

But Romney was different, he was independently super wealthy, he could self-finance his campaign, as well as tap his rich Wall Street cronies for unlimited funds. It soon dawned upon the Republican powers-to-be that only Romney had the financial resources to match Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s money machine.

Herein, the conservative Republican Party establishment that didn’t support him earlier began to look beyond their past critiques of him and instead started to notice his coffers. This conservative flip-flop also showed America that core conservative principles are negotiable and can be subsumed to political interests.

It is a dirty little secret that national parties equate viable and electable candidates with how much money they can raise. It is all about the Benjamins! Neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party looks beyond that. They will not support or handpick candidates who are not independently wealthy or have the connections to raise the money.

However, the parties have been proven wrong many times before, money doesn’t necessarily equal a win; if it did Mitt Romney still would be in the race. Thankfully, the voters don’t care how much cash the candidate has raised; they look at the candidates through a different prism than party machinists.

All in all, the conservatives have no choice but to support McCain, with Mitt Romney resigning from his presidential bid, John McCain is the defacto Republican nominee.

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