Conservative commentator Ann Coulter believes that the tea party’s admirable effort to defund Obamacare during the government shutdown was weakened by internecine bickering over political tactics.
Coulter, author of the new book, “Never Trust a Liberal over 3 — Especially a Republican,” explained on Sean Hannity’s Thursday radio show that the GOP would have been better served by attacking Obamacare, instead of attacking each other over the tactics.
“Not the ones in Washington, in my opinion,” Coulter said. “I think it was more of the conservative media let us down a little bit… They’re going on TV and radio and attacking our guys. Could you be attacking Obamacare instead? OK, you disagree with the tactics, but we’re all against Obamacare. Could we just talk that for three weeks?”
“[I] get very angry at people like John McCain for spending so much time on TV attacking Ted Cruz,” she added. “I don’t think we conservatives should spend our time attacking — forget McCain, I’m all for attacking him — but other Republicans, they come from different states. Any Republican is better than any Democrat.”
Ultimately, Coulter said, it comes down to winning elections and that is area where the so-called consulting class has let the Republican Party down.
“The important thing to concentrate on now is winning elections. If we had — what was one of the ones you mentioned, West Virginia — political consultants blew that one because they wanted to make money off the deep-pocketed candidate , a very wealthy John Raese, who has three homes. They didn’t even believe he lived in West Virginia. But consultants don’t care. Should we run someone who could win in West Virginia, twice — in two Senate elections? Or, should we just go to the deep-pocketed candidates so we can buy Jaguars?”
Coulter pointed to the void the failures of the consulting class has created, which has been filled by conservative commentators like herself and Hannity and that has not always led to a winning outcome.
“It started occurring to me: It really all starts with the political consultants, because the way the world is supposed to work — people like you and me and Levin, the chattering class — we’re supposed to be able to be purists,” Coulter continued. “We’re the idea people. We chitchat. We move the public dialogue. Our job isn’t to get Republicans elected. Our job is to move public dialogue. The Republican National Committee, the Republican Governors Association and Senatorial Committee — their job is to get Republicans elected. It was only when they dropped the ball so that they could line their own pockets that we started getting involved in this and by the way, it’s been largely catastrophic.”