Ann Coulter gave an impassioned, almost pleading speech at CPAC this year, appealing to the conservative crowd that Mitt Romney was the only candidate who could go up and defeat Barack Obama in November.
Coulter, who later signed copies of her book "Demonic: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America", leveled many zingers at her opponents and critics.
"You've won! There are no Rockefeller Republicans anymore!" she exhorted to the crowd.
"Republicans have managed to defeat a sitting president only twice in the last 100 years, 1912 and 1980 with Ronald Reagan. That’s why I said from this stage a year ago that I thought Chris Christie is the only one who could beat Obama."
(Ed. note: The 1912 reference is wrong. Teddy Roosevelt, as a third-party candidate, finished ahead of sitting President William Howard Taft, but Woodrow Wilson won the race. Reagan is the only one to have pulled it off. Sorry, Ann.)
Thanks to Maggie's Notebook for publishing a lot of the speech as well. I recorded it, but it helped to have a reference for some jumbled spots.
I’m pessimistic, or I was more pessimistic to think about any Republican beating Obama, and Christie is the kind of politician who comes around only once in a generation. Like Reagan, he speaks the truth, directly, boldly, like no one else will, taking on the evil empire of our day, by which I mean, the public sector unions. But despite my Herculean efforts, Christie has decided not to run – now he won’t even return my calls. I thought we had something special, Governor.
But since last year, Obama has gotten worse and Romney has gotten a lot better. I assume you’ve been watching the debates, and I think Romney’s been practicing and he’s a lot better in these debates than he was in 2008.
Meanwhile, independents are fleeing Obama…if you saw the recent polls, it looks like he is not headed for re-election and no amount of that Jakarta charm is going to get people their jobs back."
Coulter didn't mention Rick Santorum and Ron Paul much, but trained more of her fire on Newt Gingrich instead.
"Who is going to appeal to the most Independents? If we are betting the future of this country on Newt Gingrich not being repellent to Independents, I want my money back. I’m not taking that bet.
On election day, every stupid woman in the country will be driving to the polls, sobbing because she is afraid of Newt Gingrich...The only question you should keep asking yourself, is who will have the most appeal to Independents, to undecideds, to my gender.
When Reagan ran and was the first to take out a sitting president in 100 years, he did not run against Jimmy Carter by calling him a Socialist. He didn’t call him a Kenyan colonialist, he didn’t call him a radical. He didn’t say anything about Carter. He said Carter’s policies have failed. That’s how he took out a sitting president for the first time in 100 years.
I feel like the Godfather asking for Luca Brasi, nothing fancy. Just get the job done."
Coulter talked about how they'll try to go after anyone the right, out of the normal playbook against any Republican candidate:
"They will call us dumb or call us stupid. One candidate who frustrates one of those is Mitt Romney. You can’t call him dumb. You can’t call him crazy. You can call him square and that’s what a lot of right-wingers don’t like about him."
Comments