Miss Coulter’s comments came in response to a report in The Times on Monday that detailed Republicans’ concerns that Mr. Duke’s presidential bid would divide their party.”He’s an unknown quantity; that scares people. What they read about him causes people to cringe because they don’t know him.”
Miss Coulter said Mr. Duke’s Republican critics “need to take a deep breath and exhale.”
Sounds pretty scary, huh? But all we did was to swap Donna Brazile’s name with Ann Coulter’s, and Al Sharpton’s with David Duke, from this Washington Times article. (And it’s instructive that Brazile’s quotes–assuming they’re true–indicate that she’s willing to work with anyone who will increase black votes to the Democrats, no matter how odious that person is. As Rod Dreher of the conservative National Review wrote in January:
Republicans took a whipping over a gaffe made by Trent Lott, a mere senator, but now the Democrats have to deal with a bona fide black racial demagogue, a man in David Duke’s league, blunder bussing onto the national stage as a candidate for his party’s nomination. Democratic politicians are scared to death of offending Sharpton, because they don’t want to be denounced as racist by a man who can command such media attention.
Or as Peter Beinart of the liberal New Republic recently wrote:
Bull*****ing is the mechanism Sharpton uses to escape unscathed from the moral train wrecks that dot his career. On “Meet the Press” in January, Tim Russert reminded the freshly reinvented presidential candidate of four episodes in his past: His 1987 conviction for defaming a man he accused of raping Tawana Brawley; his 1993 conviction for tax evasion; his 1995 incitement against a Jewish store owner in Harlem, which culminated in the racially motivated murder of seven of the store’s employees; and his 2002 eviction from the Empire State Building for failing to pay his rent. Sharpton responded by implying racism and changing the subject: “I think you’ve got white candidates with worse backgrounds who–.” Russert interrupted to ask whom he meant. Sensing a dead end, Sharpton declared, “I’m not getting into name-calling,” and changed the subject once again. “If you want to talk about background, talk about how a white male stabbed me at a nonviolent march. I forgave him, testified for him. That’s somebody that brings America together,” he declared. Russert doggedly returned to his question, asking Sharpton, “Why not apologize for Tawana Brawley?” “To apologize for believing and standing with a woman–I think all of us need to take women’s claims more seriously,” Sharpton responded indignantly. “No apology for Tawana Brawley?” Russert tried one last time. “No apology for standing up for civil rights,” replied Sharpton.
That last answer is particularly revealing. According to Al Sharpton, the behavior of Al Sharpton is synonymous with the cause of civil rights, and therefore any criticism of Al Sharpton is, by definition, an attack on racial justice. By running for president, Sharpton is effectively asking the Democratic Party to bless that proposition. He knows that, by treating him as a legitimate candidate, the party is ratifying his self-coronation as the leader of black America. And, if the Democratic Party and the media accept him as the leader of black America, the post-Martin Luther King Jr., post-Jesse Jackson civil rights movement will become, in effect, whatever Sharpton says it is.
Brazile’s response to Beinart’s article? “Stop beating him up.”
Dreher sums it up best: “Sharpton will make fools of the Democrats.
“Good. They created this monster. They bloody well deserve him.”
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