Queen Ann Advises Republicans: Always Listen to Mother

I don’t have many role models — living ones, anyway. I tend to avoid idolizing celebrities. As for the few I do admire, I make it a point never to glimpse behind the curtain and into their personal lives, lest the spell be broken.

And then there’s Ann.

As extremely private as she is, Ann Coulter reveals another dimension of her heart in her latest book, Never Trust a Liberal Over 3 –Especially a Republican. A massive compilation of her best columns ranging from gun control to Sandra Fluke, the book’s last chapter contains her eulogies of her father and mother. Only Ann could manage to weave together comic one-liners about liberal attitudes towards Islamofascism with warm, heartfelt remembrances of the two most powerful influences on her life:

Your parents are your whole world when you are a child. You only recognize what is unique about them when you get older and see how the rest of the world diverges from your standard of normality.

Divergence is the theme of Ann’s latest tome, and it plays out in a variety of ways. Agreeing with much of the conservative blogosphere, Ann is quick to criticize the failures of Republicans more focused on their ego than party success, while arguing for Republicans to embrace liberal tactics in order to beat liberals at their own game.

We need to adopt the Democrats’ merciless enforcement techniques without the ideology. Is that so hard? Instead, we keep getting all the passion with none of the discipline.

Ann, her mother, and Herman Cain in 2004 – a memory recalled in the book’s last chapter.

Never Trust a Liberal Over 3 is a playbook studying Democrat campaign tactics from an educated and experienced pundit’s perspective. Most refreshingly, Ann draws much-needed attention to the fact that Republicans consistently play along with the Democrat farce in order to stay in D.C. (Think amnesty.) While she isn’t the first commentator to draw attention to the posers within the party, Ann’s extensively researched quick-wit offers a new perspective on this old argument:

Learn to rely on facts and don’t get swept up in group-think slogans about “Establishment Republicans.” Otherwise, boy will your face be red when you realize you were the one fighting for the Establishment Republicans! (Gingrich, Perry, Santorum and Paul Ryan-all of whom support amnesty.)

A lawyer by trade, Ann lays out a winning case against Republicans who cower in the face of liberal hypocrisy. For Ann, the facts can make a difference if we actually take the time to read, apply, and publicize them. (And bash them over the media’s head a few thousand times for good measure.) But relying on the facts is a struggle in the era. I recently read an article about millennial wine lovers who don’t trust reviewer ratings. If they don’t trust Robert Parker’s idea of a good wine, what’s going to make them any more willing to trust a pundit’s idea of good political strategy? It isn’t as if they were taught any real history in college (there’s a reason Ann titled that chapter “Higher Re-Education”), let alone applicable research skills.

Perhaps we’d be best off taking a cue from Ann’s mother’s playbook:

She had a rare combination of being completely moral and completely nonjudgmental at the same time – the exact opposite of liberals who have absolutely no morals and yet are ferociously judgmental. You could tell Mother anything, get good counsel, and not end up feeling worse about yourself.

In the day and age where left-wing cynicism “infects millions directly and indirectly,” perhaps reasonable solutions based on impartial evidence are exactly what we need. As Ann so rightly observes, it is amazing what conservatives can accomplish when we push our egos out of the way.