COULTER: Oh, and I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards. But it turns out that you have to go into rehab if you use the word "faggot," so I'm -- so I'm kind of at an impasse, can't really talk about Edwards. So I think I'll just conclude here and take your questions.
You can view the video of Coulter through both Media Matters and Think Progress.
Americablog has published a letter from The Human Rights Campaign, which demands that the GOP presidential candidates publicly condemn Coulter's remarks against Edwards.
First I'll say that I find Coulter's remarks vile and disgusting. There is no place for that kind of gutter-talk within our political discourse. But at the same time, I'm not surprised at how the hard-lined conservatives have descended into this slime-pit of homophobia, crass insult, and extreme hate. The problem with these hard-lined conservatives is that they have no presidential candidate which has the neoconservative ideology and religious conviction that President George Bush has. Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, and John McCain are all viewed with suspicion by the hard-lined conservatives. According to a February 24, 2007 New York Times article:
WASHINGTON, Feb. 24 — A group of influential Christian conservatives and their allies emerged from a private meeting at a Florida resort this month dissatisfied with the Republican presidential field and uncertain where to turn.
The event was a meeting of the Council for National Policy, a secretive club whose few hundred members include Dr. James C. Dobson of Focus on the Family, the Rev. Jerry Falwell of Liberty University and Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform. Although little known outside the conservative movement, the council has become a pivotal stop for Republican presidential primary hopefuls, including George W. Bush on the eve of his 1999 primary campaign.
But in a stark shift from the group’s influence under President Bush, the group risks relegation to the margins. Many of the conservatives who attended the event, held at the beginning of the month at the Ritz-Carlton on Amelia Island, Fla., said they were dismayed at the absence of a champion to carry their banner in the next election.
Many conservatives have already declared their hostility to Senator John McCain of Arizona, despite his efforts to make amends for having once denounced Christian conservative leaders as “agents of intolerance,” and to former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, because of his liberal views on abortion and gay rights and his three marriages.
Many were also suspicious of former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts; members have used the council as a conduit to distribute a dossier prepared by a Massachusetts conservative group about liberal elements of his record on abortion, stem cell research and gay rights. (Mr. Romney has worked to convince conservatives that his views have changed.)
And some members of the council have raised doubts about lesser known candidates — Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas and Representative Duncan Hunter of California, who were invited to Amelia Island to address an elite audience of about 60 of its members, and Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, who spoke to the full council at its previous meeting, in October in Grand Rapids, Mich.
Although each of the three had supporters, many conservatives expressed concerns about whether any of the candidates could unify their movement or raise enough money to overtake the front-runners, several participants in the meetings said.
Finally, in a measure of their dissatisfaction, a delegation of prominent conservatives at Amelia Island tried to enlist as a candidate Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, a guest speaker at the event. A charismatic politician with a clear conservative record, Mr. Sanford is almost unknown outside his home state and has done nothing to prepare for a presidential run. He firmly declined the group’s entreaties, people involved in the recruiting effort said. A spokesman for Mr. Sanford said he would not comment.
The conservatives do not have a champion similar to George W. Bush. They are forced to choose among three front-running moderate Republicans, each which has a more liberal stance than they are willing to accept, and each of these three front-runners have been courting the hard-liners and Religious Right. Both Romney and Giuliani attended the CPAC conference. And while McCain did not attend the CPAC conference, you can find plenty of references of McCain's pandering here. And finally, the Republican Party has some serious political and electoral problems here--namely the Bush White House. The Bush administration has been plagued with the constant political scandals, the disaster of the Iraq war, and the falling poll numbers. This is not going to help the current crop of Republican presidential candidates. The American people have decided that this country is on the wrong track, and yet the Bush administration is just about forcing the Republican Party to toe the Bush policy line. So there is a lot of anger within the hard-lined conservatives and the Religious Right. Their ideological champion of George Bush has become a presidential failure, and a political albatross for the Republican Party. Americans are trusting the Democrats more than they are trusting the Republicans. The Iraq war will be the big debate for the 2008 elections. And the only way for the hard-lined conservatives and Religious Right to express their anger is to lash out, uncontrollably. Hence, Ann Coulter calls John Edwards a faggot, and the CPAC crowd cheers in approval.
UPDATE: Here's Ann Coulter's remarks through YouTube:
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