Prof. Schaff links to this piece by Joe Carter who says,
In the 1950's, William F. Buckley, Jr. and National Review led the move to anathematize the John Birch Society from the ranks of respectable conservatism. Today, we religious conservatives need to follow that precedent by purging the most odious hangers-on from our company. I propose that we start with the obnoxious, hate-spewing Ann Coulter. Why do we justify the vile rants of Coulter and her ilk? Is it excusable because they direct the bile at liberals? We sully our own reputations--and disgrace our Lord--by associating ourselves with such hateful speech. The sooner we shun them the sooner we can return to the path of serious discourse.
I'll echo Prof. Schaff and say it's hard to disagree with that. I've said before that Coulter and the likes should have no place in the Republican Party because they serve no constructive purpose. The slash-and-burn politics so common in our era of twenty-four hour cable news and sound bites serves to lower our political discourse. "The festishization of conflict," writes David Brown in his recent biography of Richard Hofstadter, "has obscured the value of consensus" (p. xxii) since it highlights what divides us rather than unites us. Coulter would be wise to listen to the man she herself looks up to and respects: Ronald Reagan, who gave some sound advice on political compromise:
When I began entering into the give and take of legislative bargaining in Sacramento, a lot of the most radical conservatives who had supported me during the election didn't like it. "Compromise" was a dirty word to them and they wouldn't face the fact that we couldn't get all of what we wanted today. They wanted all or nothing and they wanted it all at once. If you don't get it all, some said, don't take anything.
If you got seventy-five or eighty percent of what you were asking for, I say, you take it and fight for the rest later, and that's what I told these radical conservatives who never got used to it.
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