Ann Coulter hypocritically complains about McCain-Feingold. Jeff Koopersmith demolishes her latest lame rant.
Feb. 21, 2008 – Geneva (apj.us) – Ann Coulter’s newest column was so, well, mind-numbing, that I couldn’t bring myself to comment on it. Suffice it to say that it was just another of her endless rants against Senator John McCain for being a “liberal.”
This was tantamount to ranting at Ted Kennedy for being a neoconservative.
This week, in a weak-kneed ode to Saint Ronald Reagan, Ms. Coulter offers that Reagan would not have run for Governor in 1966 if the McCain-Feingold Campaign finance reform laws were not overturned by the Supreme Court for being certain death to freedom of speech.
Again, Coulter takes a swipe at Senator McCain, but not much of one.
Now remember, Ann Coulter is a “constitutional lawyer.” She is even billed as Human Events’ resident legal scholar, which I admit is more of an insult than a triumph, but nonetheless she should know better.
Freedom of speech does not signify that one can say, write, film, and publish whatever one wants. It means that government cannot interfere with your right to voice your opinion. We all know that yelling “Fire!” in a theater that has no fire – crowded or not – is a felony in most jurisdictions, but Coulter might argue that it is not a crime, and that despite the potential for people to die by being trampled in such a theater, the right she thinks she has to do it is, she believes, protected by the First Amendment.
I also find it amusing that Coulter is ranting about the First Amendment when she generally complains about most all constitutional amendments that make up the Bill of Rights.
That said, it is not true that Ronald Reagan could not run for president today because his supporters couldn’t raise enough money for him to do so. In fact, everything points to the opposite case. This year candidates for the White House and their supporters will spend in excess of $2 billion vying for the Oval Office. The candidates alone will spend a billion dollars, and the phony “independent” campaign committees that McCain-Feingold left open in the law will raise and spend another billion – maybe more – to win the most powerful seat on earth.
Let’s see… in 1966 Ann Coulter was four or five years old. Yet she tells us that car dealer Holmes Tuttle and his gang couldn’t have raised the money to run Mr. Reagan for governor of California had McCain-Feingold been the law.
Baloney. Holmes Tuttle was tricky enough to be a car dealer – and a mega one. He was, I am certain, conniving enough to raise some money for Ron Reagan even today. I knew him, and I knew others like him. In fact, the first campaign I worked on was Ronald Reagan’s 1966 gubernatorial race. I held Reagan in high esteem and had known him for years through my family.