Coulter goes after religion – Digby's Hullabaloo

Coulter goes after religion

by digby

I wrote about her attacks on Jews and Catholics for Salon today:

Coulter was way ahead of her time with the immigrant and Muslim bashing and took the heat for it. Now even establishment favorites like Jeb Bush, the man whose own children are the product of a multicultural upbringing, isdecrying multiculturalism in a vain attempt to attract the xenophobes who loathe the fact that he’s married to a Mexican-American woman. And Marco Rubio this weekruled out a path to citizenship for undocumented workers forever. Her influence is profound.

So it’s a good idea to check in with what’s she’s saying today so that we might have an idea where the GOP will be going tomorrow. Lo and behold, she is once again pushing the boundaries in ways that seem so shocking and un-American that you can hardly believe anyone who is accepted into polite company would go there in 2015.

It all started at the last Republican debate when Coulter tweeted, “How many f—ing Jews do these people think there are in the United States?” It was jarring even for her — if there is a GOP sacred cow these days, it is Israel, and Coulter started hacking away at it in public with a metaphorical machete. (It’s not that there is no precedent for Republican hostility toward Jewish people, but we haven’t seen it in a long time.)

By way of explanation, Coulter told The Daily Beast:

“I’m accusing Republicans of thinking the Jews have so much power. They’re the ones who are comedically acting out this play where Jews control everything,” …

“My point was this whole culture of virtue-signaling where debates are about nothing. Look, Republicans all agree 100 percent that we are pro-Israel, pro-Life, pro-gun. So why do we spend so much time on these issues? It’s just pandering, so who are they pandering to?”

In a follow up tweet to her comment about the “f—ing Jews,” she pondered whether the GOP’s focus on Israel was really a ploy to kiss up to evangelicals, thus proving that she has finally caught up with the conventional wisdom every pundit this side of Honolulu has known for decades. She later told the Daily Beast, “I don’t think the Republicans understand evangelicals. We don’t need to be coddled to constantly—we’re not Democrats. There is no doubt that the Republican Party is the party of Israel and of Life. So why keep sucking up on Israel?”

It’s still unclear why she cares so much about this, other than that perhaps she doesn’t like Jewish people any better than she likes Asians, Latinos, or any other group outside her own racial, ethnic and religious identity. Just yesterday she went on a twitter tirade rattling off numbers of immigrants who come to the U.S. from from countries like Mexico, China, Vietnam etc., than come from England. There is no explanation offered for why she felt this was important to share with her followers, but it doesn’t take a mind reader to figure it out. (No word on why more Brits aren’t trying to emigrate here, but it might be because they don’t want to live in a country that turns bigots like Coulter into highly paid celebrities.)

But Coulter wasn’t content to slam the Republicans for pandering to the “f—ing Jews.” With the Pope’s visit this week, she has gone on a tear against Catholics too. Not that she is the only right winger criticizing Francis. They are nearly apoplectic about his preaching on behalf of the poor and climate change. In fact, they have taken it upon themselves to dictate what issues the Pope is entitled to address and it appears that in their view his role is solely that of vagina policeman. (The papacy has certainly diminished since the days it rules over all Christendom.) Conservative commentator David Limbaugh — admittedly not even a Catholic, which means his knowledge of Catholic theology is likely confined to binge watching re-runs of “The Flying Nun” on Netflix — put it this way in a tweet yesterday:

Case closed. Coulter piled on:

Oddly, “American Catholics” have not yet been informed of their official separation with the Roman Catholic church. You’d think this would be bigger news. And it’s going to be a heck of a surprise to the citizens of Maryland to learn that the Catholic founders of their state weren’t allowed to be American citizens.

But the bigger picture here is that while we all know it’s a right wing prerogative to attack Islam, Coulter has also attacked Jews and Catholics in the space of a week. And attacking any of the Judeo-Christian religious traditions had been off limits at least since Nixon was insulting every religion known to man. Surely she knows that the religious right is one of the GOP’s most valuable constituencies, and that most certainly includes conservative Jews and Catholics. It’s causing some of her fellow Republicans to recoil.

But maybe that’s the point. Trump is as disdainful of Republican leadership as he is of the Democrats. Carson and Fiorina are total outsiders who have never held office before. Ted Cruz is accusing the GOP of “surrender politics.” And a large number of Republican voters loathe and despise their own leaders. Perhaps Coulter, as is often the case, is simply out front in the next phase of the Republican party crack-up: She’s signaling an impulse to discipline religious factions in the Party which may deviate from or otherwise compromise the central mission of the conservative movement — to preserve the (white) American way of life. It’s obvious that she believes the party’s extreme fealty to Israel and it’s vulnerability to the social justice teachings of the Catholic Church are threats to that project.

They are …

Read on …