I once heard someone on the radio say, “Don’t tell me who conservatives are and who conservatives aren’t.” The lesson that conservatives come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and ages and that it is highly beneficial is a lesson conservatives are just beginning to figure out. Sometimes the converts are who you never would expect, and the same holds true for those who leave the fold. The most recent example would be comedienne Roseanne Barr and conservative author and commentator Ann Coulter. At one time, it might have been understood who was left and who was right. But in an age where men can be women and vice versa, things can be surprising.
Ann Coulter, once the darling of conservative media, recently tweeted about former Attorney General Bill Barr, who seemed to give credibility to the long-debunked Steele dossier. In a 2020 interview with CBS’ Catherine Herridge, Barr stated that he was “very concerned” that both the dossier and Christopher Steele “were used as a vector for the Russians to inject disinformation into the political campaign.” But Barr seemed to go along with the FBI and former director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe, who believed there was no “damning foreign disinformation” on Hunter Biden’s lap top, which has since been confirmed to be real. Coulter then called Trump supporters the “Trump cult” and accused them of advancing “BS conspiracy theories.”
Barr couldn’t resist answering Coulter back and took a personal shot as well. The result: not much support for Coulter but plenty of welcome to conservatism for Roseanne Barr. For anyone who might not remember, it was Ann Coulter who announced in June of 2015 during an episode of “Real Time with Bill Maher” that of all the candidates that had, up to that point, declared their candidacy, Trump had the best chance of winning the GOP nomination. She was practically laughed off the stage. Coulter’s fall from conservative grace has been hard and fast. From writing a bestseller called In Trump We Trust, E Pluribus Awesome! prior to the 2016 election, to an appearance on Andrew Sullivan’s Dishcast podcast, where she said she was aware of what she thought Trump’s character was but agreed with his stance on immigration. She said, “I was well familiar with what a narcissistic, ridiculous, tacky, vulgar, arriviste this guy was. That I knew about. The one thing I underestimated, in fact, did not see at all is, I had no idea how abjectly stupid the man is.” It was at this point that Ann Coulter fell off conservative radar.
Roseanne Barr, however, has seemed to be someone who has managed to reinvent herself. She might have, in the old days, been thought of as nothing more than a comedienne, and eyes rolled at her antics while she was married to fellow comedian Tom Arnold. But those days are behind her. She is a supporter of Donald Trump and appears on the Fox News Channel. She is a believer in the American people, and in February, during an appearance with Jesse Watters, she summed it up in part, quite rightly, like this, “Talk about Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. A whole bunch of Mr. and Mrs. Smiths — We need to go and we need to do it. And if we don’t do it now, we are never going to get the chance to do it again.”
In her heyday, Ann Coulter could dish it out with the best of them, and conservatives cheered her on. Now, she may want to think twice about ripping on Trump for disrespecting his base.