Steyn on Coulter: Democrat Human Shields Exposed

Thursday, August 24th, 2006 12:01 pm by Neal

(Hat tip: Lucianne)

Read Mark Steyn’s article about how Ann Coulter’s controversial book (Godless: The Church of Liberalism) has finally exposed the Democrat’s childlike strategy of “irreproachable biography” thus rendering said strategy impotent and silly. This review was written last month, and those who closely follow Ann Coulter may have heard this point before; however, I’ve yet to read a review that nails it the “Steyn Way”. His review, Ann Coulter: America’s fiery, blond commentatrix, reminds us of the absurd claims made by the Democrats’ in the 2004 election.

But it wasn’t until Ann Coulter pointed it out that you realize how heavily the Democratic party is invested in irreproachable biography. For example, John Kerry’s pretzel-twist of a war straddle in the 2004 campaign relied mainly on former senator Max Cleland, a triple amputee from a Vietnam grenade accident whom the campaign dispatched to stake out Bush’s Crawford ranch that summer. Maybe he’s still down there. It’s gotten kinda crowded on the perimeter since then, what with Cindy Sheehan et al. But the idea is that you can’t attack what Max Cleland says about war because, after all, you’ve got most of your arms and legs and he hasn’t. This would normally be regarded as the unworthy tactic of snake-oil-peddling shyster evangelists and, indeed, the Dems eventually scored their perfect Elmer Gantry moment. In 2004, in the gym of Newton High School in Iowa, Senator John Edwards skipped the dreary Kerry-as-foreign-policy-genius pitch and cut straight to the Second Coming. “We will stop juvenile diabetes, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and other debilitating diseases . . . When John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.” Mr. Reeve had died the previous weekend, but he wouldn’t have had Kerry and Edwards been in the White House. Read his lips: no new crutches. The healing balm of the Massachusetts Messiah will bring the crippled and stricken to their feet, which is more than Kerry’s speeches ever do for the able-bodied. As the author remarks, “If one wanted to cure the lame, one could reasonably start with John Edwards.”

“What crackpot argument can’t be immunized by the Left’s invocation of infallibility based on personal experience?” wonders Miss Coulter of Cleland, Sheehan, the Jersey Girls and Co. “If these Democrat human shields have a point worth making, how about allowing it to be made by someone we’re allowed to respond to?”

God, she’s good. Steyn makes many great points you won’t want to miss. Read the entire review here.

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