Counter-Productive Insults

Here's a featured response to Ann Coulter's CPAC speech from a commenter named RB at Talking Points Memo.

"As I read the reaction/fallout from Ann Coulter’s remarks at CPAC this week I’m annoyed by the entire progressive reaction to it and most of the many other outrages committed on a daily basis by the Republican Party. Why doesn’t a progressive with an audience say something to the effect “This is who and what the once proud and honorable Republican Party has turned itself into. It is a party of hate, intolerance, incompetence, greed, treason, fanatical, hostile to science and reality, and totally corrupt. They have no honor and no shame. They’re fascists and a cancer on our great nation, plain and simple and this is just another example of that.”

This is exactly the wrong kind of reaction to Ann Coulter's provocations.

First, RB's response is exactly what Coulter is trying to elicit from liberals/ progressives. In fact, the only thing that Coulter and her audience enjoy more than making the comments themselves is "outraged" liberal reaction. Congratulations RB, you've been jerked around and your opponents are enjoying their little moment of victory.

Second, RB is profoundly wrong in lumping everybody who attended the conference or everybody in the Republican Party into the "fascist" camp. Coulter conservatism may be dominant, but my impression is that it does not constitute a majority of the Republican Party. A lot of business-oriented Republicans, Main Street Republicans, Western rancher types, and conservative evangelicals would be either neutral or turned off by Coulter (in the same way that lots of liberals are turned off by Al Sharpton). Tarring all of these kinds of Republicans with the "fascist" brush is both inaccurate and counter-productive because it supports Coulter's basic arguments about liberals.

Third, it's important to emphasize that a lot of the people attending the CPAC conference wouldn't have necessarily agreed with Coulter even if they were highly entertained. Several students from my classes went to CPAC and moon over "Ann Coulter" even though they might argue that they don't share Coulter's "extreme" views. Actually, the head of the campus Republicans has told me several times that conservatives aren't nearly as extreme as I portray them on this blog let alone the "fascists" that RB is claiming. By calling the CPAC audience "fascists," RB is cutting off any possibility of communicating with people who might only be weakly identified with the Coulter agenda. Once again, this is exactly what somebody like Coulter would want because it tells conservative-oriented students that they can't talk with liberals (to paraphrase one of Coulter's titles).

There are many ways in which the various types of conservatism are defined by "hate, intolerance, incompetence, greed, treason . . . hostile to science and reality, and [total corruption]. I've argued most of these things myself. Still, just throwing around the terms is the liberal version of Coulterism and a not very clever version of Coulterism at that. If liberals want to be convincing, they have to show how Coulter's "jokes" actually appeal to hate and intolerance, how the Bush administration's incompetence is a manifestation of their conservative loyalties, the ways in which the religious right is hostile to science, and the many ways that people on the right are uncomfortable with living in the United States. It was by patiently working out these criticisms in the context of the failed war in Iraq that the left got the upper hand in the current rhetorical wars. Maintaining that patience is crucial to keeping that upper hand.

RB should have kept his insults in his pocket. Coulter and other right-wing put down artists are having a tough time these days. There's no sense in making life easier for them by playing their game.