Last night, Ann Coulter caused a stir with this tweet, sent during the GOP debate:
How many f—ing Jews do these people think there are in the United States?
— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) September 17, 2015
One minute later, she followed with this:
Maybe it's to suck up to the Evangelicals.
— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) September 17, 2015
Then, as Twitter devolved into its native state — a completely useless and utterly boring rage spiral — she elaborated that she was making a larger point about Republican pandering:
How to get applause from GOP donors: 1) Pledge to start a war 2) Talk about job creators 3) Denounce abortion 4) Cite Reagan 5) Cite Israel.
— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) September 17, 2015
This is classic Ann-trolling. First, she makes a statement that causes people to lose their minds, then she follows it up with a less-prominent clarification that modifies the original context, then she moves on to a more serious point. And it works. Every time. As she’s responding to the outrage, she makes her main point to a much larger audience than would otherwise engage with her, and her primary point is infinitely more sensible than the inflammatory tweet. In this case — as she explained in her column – she claims the GOP is living in an ancient, Reagan past, while Donald Trump is a man of the present.
But those who waste time following Twitter wars (I’m occasionally guilty — when I’m bored and stuck in traffic) can spot what else is going on here. In condemning pandering, Coulter is using language that appeals to a microscopic slice of the Twitterverse that is obsessed with the notion that the GOP is full of so-called “cuckservatives” (short for “cuckolded conservative”). Who is a cuckservative? Someone like this:
The cuckservative feels very passionate about issues like abortion, which rarely directly affects his own life. In fact, you might often hear a cuckservative talking about how abortion is “racist” since blacks and mestizos overwhelmingly get more abortions that whites.
On the other hand, the cuckservative feels uncomfortable about issues like immigration. If the cuckservative is not an outright open-borders shill, he will only give lip service about “securing the border” or “opposing illegal but favoring legal immigration” but he will never talk about immigration very much. After all, immigration has very serious implications for Western Civilization, so it doesn’t concern the cuckservative.
And:
The cuckservative is often fanatically in favor of transracial adoption. He sees it as some divine calling. In a sense, this is cuckoldry at its essence, since these whites are usually forgoing their own inclusive fitness to adopt someone from another race. As Heartiste notes, they’re race-cucking their own families.
“Race-cucking their own families.” That’s next-level strange. Then there’s this:
The cuckservative, although never Jewish, often seems vicariously to live through Israel. Since the cuckservative feels that he cannot defend his own ethnic interests, he’ll defend Israel’s. The cuckservative cares more about Israel’s borders than his own. Israel adamantly defends its own ethnic interests and perhaps deep down the cuckservative respects this on some unconscious level.
Comments
So, what does Coulter tweet all night? Snide comments about GOP obsessions with abortion, insufficient attention to immigration (especially as compared to support for Israel’s border fence — a “cuckservative” world talking point), and obsession with Israel. In short, she’s pandering — pandering to a very small, very angry crowd that’s far more white nationalist than it is recognizably conservative. It’s a shame to see someone of Coulter’s considerable talents (and with her considerable platform) fling around these talking points, which serve mainly to keep her in the news and to mobilize a particularly nasty Twitter following. They do not reflect conservative ideals, they do not advance conservative ideals, nor will they even advance the civilizational goals she seems to care so much about. Like it or not, if one wants to actually secure the border and impose a sensible immigration policy, extending a middle finger to conservative America — while attention-getting — is ultimately unpersuasive.
