A CPAC Prediction: Another Ann Coulter Tantrum

CPAC 2009 is well underway (at the same hotel, in fact, where progressives from all over are gathering for America's Future Now! in early June). And we are beyond thrilled -- really, there are no words -- to learn that, after last year's unfortunate absence, Ann Coulter has finally been released from whatever basement/undisclosed location/far circle of hell they'd consigned her to last year, and will be back at the podium once again in her full venomous glory this Saturday afternoon.

Last year was the first time in a decade that CPAC came and went without La Coulter, with the result that news coverage of the whole event was so much quieter. Evidently, someone in the GOP decided that there really is such a thing as too fascist for prime time, and it might be best to keep the movement's most flamboyant provocateur well out of sight during an election year. Not to mention the fact that her 2007 remarks about Democratic candidate John Edwards gave him an enormous and decidedly unwelcome fundraising lift. As a result, last spring came and went without a fresh Coulter outrage for liberals to bitch about.

We hardly knew what to do with ourselves. It was awful. Really. I seem to recall that I went out and bought some shoes instead.

Since (thanks in no small part to progressive pressure) Ann is persona non grata on most broadcast outlets these days, she makes most of her living preaching to the hordes and selling books. (Oh, and her book sales are down, too.) For over a decade now, CPAC has been her annual Big Shining Moment, her prime opportunity to polish what's left of her legacy. To that end, every year, she saves up her most over-the-top, gobstopping, new-lows-in-bad-taste-setting remarks especially for this appearance, as a summary of her CPAC performances over the years amply demonstrates:

CPAC 2007 -- "I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot,’ so I — so kind of an impasse, can’t really talk about Edwards.”

CPAC 2006 -- "I think our motto should be post-9-11, 'raghead talks tough, raghead faces consequences.'"

CPAC 2005 -- “Liberals like to scream and howl about McCarthyism, I say let’s give them some. They’ve have intellectual terror on campus for years....it’s time for a new McCarthyism.”

“Since they’re always acting like they’re oppressed…I say let’s do it, let’s oppress them.”

“In addition to racist and Nazi, how about adding traitor to the list of things that professors can’t be? And yes, I realize I just proposed firing the entire Harvard faculty.”

CPAC 2004 -- "You can never be too scandalous in talking about liberals. These people are animals; they want to destroy the country and they support the Taliban and al-Qaida the way they supported Stalin in McCarthy's day." (She also characterized the Democratic Party as being run by "breathtakingly stupid women").

CPAC 2003 -- “Why not go to war just for oil? We need oil."

CPAC 2002 -- "In contemplating college liberals, you really regret, once again, that John Walker is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals by making them realize that they could be killed, too. Otherwise they will turn out into outright traitors."

(In this same talk, Coulter also accused U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta of being consumed with hatred for America, belittled his experiences in Japanese-American internment camps during World War II, and appeared to imply that she would celebrate if he were killed.)

CPAC 2001 -- Ann Coulter told the crowd that George W. Bush had done a spectacular job during his first month in office, and speculated that perhaps he is far more clever than people had believed. In less than a month, Coulter stated, Bush has managed to totally disarm the Democrat's most cliched criticism: that Republicans are mean. Coulter suggested that Bush has apparently figured out that "all you have to do is go around calling yourself nice," making it surprisingly "easy to hornswoggle liberals." Bush has managed to control the agenda, and will continue to do so, said Coulter, as long as he continues to "treat liberals like small children having nightmares." According to Coulter, it seems as if "the mistake Republicans have been making for years was to treat liberals like adults."

CPAC 2000 -- Coulter received CPAC's annual journalism award. (I mean, really. What more can you say?)

It turns out that Coulter's big annual PR splashes at CPAC happen purely by design, not coincidence. There's a lot of synergy between CPAC and Coulter: over the years, each has leveraged its fame on the platform of the other. That synergy has been driven by the cozy fact that Ann's publicist, Lisa de Pasquale, is also the executive director of CPAC. (Pasquale and her boyfriend, Floyd Resnick, also co-own New York Close Protection Services, which provides bodyguard services to conservative blowhards, and were also credited as research help for Michelle Malkin's book, "Unhinged.") That tight connection pretty much explains why Ann always saves her biggest steamers for CPAC events.

The question this year is: Knowing that she's going to do her best to make tomorrow memorable by setting a new low in bad taste, what are we progressives going to do about it?

We could rise up in a predictable wave of liberal outrage, pout and insist that "That's not funny!", and generally do exactly what Coulter expects us to do -- which would give her exactly the kind of publicity that she wants. We're very good at this, and she knows it.

Or we could ignore her. We've had some practice at that since last year. It wouldn't be hard to simply shrug at her blitherings, and say, "Yeah. Whatever. Next." (Hmm. I bet I could use a new pair of shoes.)

Or we could simply watch, regard her with detachment, and do nothing. These days, conservative tantrums have all the excitement of a five-year-old threatening to hold her breath until she turns blue. Experienced parents know the comeback to this one: you smile sweetly and say, "Fine, dear. You go right ahead" -- and walk away. That same bemused above-it-all posture is most becoming to political adults dealing with increasingly irrational conservative behavior. You sidestep it, pat them on their heads, and move on.

It's more appropriate than you might think. I've argued for years that conservatives are basically five-year-old emotional children -- id-driven, fuzzy on the line between fact and fiction, given to magical thinking, still struggling with the idea of "fairness," prone to tantrums, and desperate for Big Daddy to keep them safe and set the boundaries they're not yet grownup enough to set for themselves.

Ann Coulter is the poster girl for the conservative attention-getting tantrum writ large; but at her age (or any age, really), it's not something any of us should give more than cursory regard to. Whatever rhetorical bombshell she drops on the crowd tomorrow, it's going to carefully designed to explode with maximum impact, and her promotion team will be standing by to make damned sure that it's the moment everybody remembers best about CPAC 2009.

The only difference now is that, PR staff notwithstanding, she has less control than she once did over how much or how well her over-the-top act will be received by the rest of us. And that's a testament to how much the political climate has changed -- and how much nicer it is to have the grownups finally in charge.

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future