Anne Coulter Unfair on McCain

An edited version was published in the February 18, 2008 issue of the The Heights.

Politically, I am a registered Democrat but I consider myself to be very moderate. In fact, all of my more liberal friends would consider me to be crazy “right wing” (although I beg to differ). I am someone who does his best to keep up-to-date with politics especially now with the presidential primaries. Today, I would like to comment on something that really hit me hard.
Recently, Anne Coulter, a very conservative columnist, made several unreasonable shots at John McCain. I never particularly liked Anne Coulter, but nothing made me loathe her as much as Thursday’s interview with Fox News claiming that if it is a Clinton-McCain battle, she would not only vote but campaign for Hillary Clinton because McCain is too left-wing. Now it is one thing to support someone that I dislike or even flip-flop, but it is another to lie and make unreasonable attacks on someone. I agree with her that McCain is more left on immigration and detainee rights than your typical neoconservative, but Coulter goes so far as to say that McCain pushes a very liberal agenda on foreign policy particularly the war in Iraq. Far crazier, she says that if Hillary is elected she will have a substantially more conservative foreign policy than McCain. Her basis for this is that McCain was against the Rumsfeld plan on Iraq which most people would now agree was an awful way to approach Iraq. The Rumsfeld plan put troops on the ground that were incredibly under-resourced (and by now virtually everyone but Anne Coulter and a few others would agree that the Rumsfeld plan was an utter disaster). Coulter says that because Hillary did not directly speak out against the Rumsfeld plan as McCain did, Hillary must necessarily be for it. Additionally, she points to Hillary’s original approval for the War in Iraq to indicate she still supports the war. The problem I have is that Coulter has neglected way too many cold hard facts. One of the few clear plans Hillary has provided for America if elected President is this 100 Days plan where she plans to have all troops withdrawn within the first year of her presidency. This stands in stark contract with McCain’s support of the troop surge. Coulter claims that McCain’s support for the surge is a ruse, and she argues McCain only claims to support the surge because he needs the Republican nomination. Wrong, wrong, and wrong. McCain has been in favor of a comprehensive troop surge from the start, in fact, the reason he disapproved of the Rumsfeld plan and criticized the War on Iraq was because of the incredible mismanagement in terms of going in with too few troops who were left to die. Coulter claims that even if McCain is genuine about his support of the troop surge he has no right to claim that he is the only Republican who ran for the nomination to support the surge. Again, Coulter misrepresents what McCain has been claiming. McCain rightly states that he is the only Republican (of the nominees) to oppose the Rumsfeld plan in favor of a troop surge. While other nominees now favor a troop surge, NONE of them originally opposed the Rumsfeld plan.
One more point she made that is worth mentioning is that Coulter chastised McCain for opposing Bush’s tax cuts. She thinks that because he opposed those tax cuts he obviously opposes all tax cuts. Coulter again misses the boat by several nautical miles. McCain soundly claims that he opposed Bush’s original tax cuts because they were not accompanied by spending cuts. Additionally he argues that there were riders on the plan that would be devastating for an already weak economy. Most importantly, however, Bush’s tax cuts were not permanent, which was troubling for McCain. McCain continues to say that he is in favor of permanent tax cuts that are accompanied by spending cuts. Since Bush’s tax cuts were neither permanent nor mandated cuts in spending, it does not seem too hard to understand why McCain voted against Bush’s plan. This is something Coulter conveniently ignores.
It made me sick when I heard her mischaracterize issues, and I sure hope that people do not take her seriously. Congratulations Anne Coulter, if you had not done so before, you just lost all your credibility as a legitimate political columnist.

Please forward any comments to maerowit@bc.edu