On Wednesday night’s broadcast of “Hannity” on the Fox News Channel, Ann Coulter offered her review of two major elections held earlier in the week — the gubernatorial races for Virginia and New Jersey.
Coulter, author of “Never Trust a Liberal over 3 — Especially a Republican,” blamed Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s loss to now Virginia Gov.-elect Terry McAuliffe on the third party Libertarian Party candidacy of Robert Sarvis and the Republican lieutenant gubernatorial nominee, E.W. Jackson, who she saw as a weak candidate.
“I think all of the elections yesterday illustrate the point of the first part of my new book, particularly in Virginia,” Coulter said. “You got them all. And that is — look, I’m a conservative Republican, but any Republican is better than any Democrat. And Republicans really have to concentrate on winning. Cuccinelli was hurt by, number one, the third-party candidate, a libertarian, as you say, we find out at the last minute being heavily funded by Democrats. Oh, that’s a surprise. I think the same thing of the alleged tea party candidate running against Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, I might add. You also have, for lack of a better term, tea party activists who hurt Cuccinelli by nominating a wonderful black Christian minister for the lieutenant [governor] candidate’s spot.”
“I love him, but that’s not a strong candidate in a state when you’re running for election. You need soccer moms, who are not our fellow Christian conservatives,” she continued. “The lieutenant governor, wonderful man, not a good candidate, lost by something like 54 to 44 percent. It was whopping. If we had had a stronger lieutenant governor [candidate], that would have helped Cuccinelli. As you say, the RNC, the establishment let Cuccinelli down. So he got — you know, everybody being hurt by this.”
As for the New Jersey race, Coulter saw New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s re-election win as a missed opportunity to pick up a Senate seat for the Republican Party due to the timing of the special election he had set for that open seat.
“If we could just move up north to New Jersey, Chris Christie — everybody knew he was going to win,” she said. “He’s charismatic. He’s popular. Congratulations to him. But he ran the table. If he had not held a special election for the Senate seat to replace Frank Lautenberg, and last night, the vote had been between Steve Lonegan and Cory Booker, Lonegan, the Republican, would have won. But his ego got in the way, and there goes another Senate seat.”
Host Sean Hannity protested the media’s “coronation” of Christie as a 2016 presidential nominee and Coulter, who had once been a proponent of a Christie, explained how she has soured on him as well.
“Well, as you know, I would defend him on pretty much everything except when he came out for amnesty,” Coulter said. “And I just think that is a mistake for our party. The Republican Party is the party of the middle class. We are not the party of Wall Street. When Republicans who come out for amnesty are doing the bidding for the plutocrats and the Wall Street crowd and the Hollywood crowd who want cheap maids and nannies and not for the working class Americans, blacks and Hispanics — that’s our party. We’re the populist party. I think that’s a big mistake. I think it’s wrong for the country. I think it’s wrong for the Republican Party. But I’d say about Christie — you know, George Pataki won three times in a state bluer than New Jersey. I know the media want to anoint Christie our nominee, but we do still have to have the primaries. So he’ll be a strong candidate and of course, I’ll support any Republican, but I don’t know if he’s our strongest candidate.”
Another problem with the current New Jersey governor, according to Coulter, is he seems to be primarily concerned about himself.
“In addition to wanting to run up some huge victory for himself, so he has a special election to replace Frank Lautenberg, you know, a month before his election — so as I say, Lonegan was closing in on Cory Booker,” Coulter said. “A lot was coming out about Cory Booker that we didn’t know. Lonegan, a very strong tea party candidate, by the way — he did incredibly well in a state like New Jersey. If it had been held at the same time that Chris Christie is winning this massive victory, I think Lonegan would have won. In addition to that, how about Chris Christie spreading some of the wealth and going down and spending one day campaigning for Ken Cuccinelli?”
“But as we saw with Chris Christie’s convention speech, it’s all about Chris Christie,” she continued. “I mean, that was the most disappointing keynote convention speech of my life. And I flew into Tampa just to see Chris Christie because he’s so charismatic. He is bright. We expected him to be the street fighter. And look, maybe he’ll be the nominee. He has a lot of good things going for him. The only thing I can’t forgive him for is amnesty.”