Nearly a year ago at the annual CPAC conference in Washington, D.C., conservative commentator Ann Coulter said, “If you don’t run Chris Christie, [Gov. Mitt] Romney will be the nominee, and we’ll lose.” But something changed over the summer, and now Coulter is touting the former Massachusetts governor.
In her column on Wednesday, Coulter, the author of “Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America,” even praised so-called RomneyCare, which resulted in attacks from various voices on the right.
But on Sean Hannity’s radio show on Thursday, she offered an explanation why she has been so outspoken in promoting Romney’s candidacy, which she said had a lot to do with getting the right candidate to defeat President Barack Obama.
“I think this election is very important,” Coulter said. “I think it’s going to be very hard for Republicans to win it. It’s hard to take out a sitting president. Republicans have taken out a sitting president twice in the last hundred years. Once was in 1920, once was in 1980. And I’ve gone back and looked at how Ronald Reagan did it in 1980. And one of the things that’s very striking coming from his advisers, his pollster is that they were going to present him as Mr. Charm School, Mr. Calm and Gentlemanly. And he was a man of peace.”
She explained tactics Reagan’s inner circle used to defeat then-incumbent President Jimmy Carter, who she said was a much easier target than Obama.
“A week before the election he took out a half hour ad with testimonials as such as Henry Kissinger,” she said. “He said things like, ‘peace is not a partisan issue.’ In the debates, he was coached and coached and coached. He used to be calm and gentlemanly. And by the way, I don’t think Jimmy Carter was as much of a charmer as Barack Obama is. Poll after poll after poll has shown that the American people do not like Barack Obama policies, but they like his family. He’s excruciatingly charming. He has a lovely family. It is not a personal hatred toward him, I mean except for some who do transfer politics to the personal.”
And she added that it isn’t that Romney is moderate in his ideology, but moderate in his temperament.
“As I wrote in last week’s column, I think Romney is the most conservative on the issues, on the positions — for example, on illegal immigration, and yet he is moderate in his temperament,” she said. “So I think he is by far and away the most — strongest candidate of the four we have right now.”
Later in her appearance, Hannity asked Coulter who she thought Romney should surround himself with as president. She said that she “better have his ear” and recalled an encounter with Romney.
“Did I tell you I met him at a fundraiser?” Coulter said. “I went up to him. I was about to leave. But I said — I just wanted to go up to him and tell him, ‘You owe me and you better be as right-wing a president as I’m telling everybody you’re going to be.’”
Coulter said she also plugged Christie to be his running mate, but said the former Massachusetts governor said “oh don’t worry” or something to that effect.