If this election has shown us anything,
it is how willing many on the Right are to abandon nearly everything they once
claimed to stand for, and make fools of themselves attempting to defend Donald
Trump. The past eight years saw a similar display on the Left, as many
Democrats swallowed their own words about Bush in order to defend Obama. Now
it’s the turn of many of those same commentators, who pointed out the hypocrisy
of the Left, to expose their own hypocrisy for the world to see.
And few have fallen as quickly, or as
far, as Ann Coulter, who once relentlessly mocked liberals for their
fetishizing of Obama. Now she is one of the most fervent members of the Cult of
Trump, even saying last year, “I don’t care if [Trump] wants to perform
abortions in the White House after this immigration policy paper.” She
enthusiastically defends nearly everything he says or does, while attacking any
conservative who refuses to fall in line behind him.
Ironic, because in Demonic: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America, her 2011 book
that predates the Trump insanity, she decries many of the same things she now
embraces—namely, mob rule and groupthink. If anything could be described as a
cult-like mob, of the sort she opposed so fiercely in 2011, it would be a Trump
rally.
Take Chapter Two, for instance—“American
Idols: The Mob’s Compulsion to Create Messiahs”. Virtually everything in the
chapter could be applied to the Trump campaign, with “Donald Trump” replacing
“Barack Obama” and “Bill Clinton”. As she states on page 18, “Being rational
individuals, conservatives don’t turn their political leaders into religious
icons. Liberals, by contrast, having all the primitive behavior of a mob,
idolize politicians.” A page later, after giving more examples of various media
personalities comparing Obama to rock stars and rainbows: “It is impossible to
imagine any conservative describing any Republican in such teeny-bopper
patois.” And on page 22: “Perhaps conservatives aren’t looking for a savior on
the ballot because they already have one. …the cultlike [sic] worship of
politicians, common to mobs, is peculiar to Democrats.”
It’s impossible to gather together a
comprehensive list of all the things the Ann Coulter of 2016 has said to
contradict the Ann Coulter of 2011 (I would imagine her new book, In Trump We Trust, is a convincing
attempt, although I haven’t had the stomach to read it). But examples are easy
to track down online, and include this nearly unbelievable, apparently
un-ironic quote from just last week: “My worship for him is like the people of
North Korea worship their Dear Leader—blind loyalty. Once he gave that Mexican
rapist speech, I’ll walk across glass for him. That’s basically it.”
Not much you can add after something
like that. What would the Coulter of 2011 have to say today?
It would be easy to go on,
deconstructing every sentence of Demonic and
comparing statements from then and now, but I think the point has already been
made. Ann Coulter was once a hard-hitting conservative icon, not afraid to tell
the truth or hold liberals in either party accountable. But the rise of Donald
Trump has turned her into a member of the very mob she once ridiculed, who
eagerly cajoles and threatens others to join the Trumpian collective, all while
eagerly worshipping her own version of the Anointed One.
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