In Praise Of Coulter

Ann Coulter is a vile human being.      The woman who once 'joked' "I would comment on John Edwards but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'faggot'" and later remarked "If I'm going to say anything about John Edwards in the future, I'll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist asssassination plot" is always up for something crude and nasty.    

But it turns out that Coulter is wise, in a way.      On the "roundtable" on ABC's This Week, Coulter said of speculation that Mitt Romney would tap Florida Senator Mark Rubio as his running mate

I think that would be a mistake because the same people who loved Rubio loved [former presidential candidate and Texas Gov.]Rick PerryI want someone who’s been a bit more tested.

Ann at least recognizes someone who's not ready for prime time.     Moreover, Rubio already has been tested- and found to be a liar.     A year ago, we learned from The Huffington Post

Rubio's official biography stated that his parents "came to America following Fidel Castro's takeover," a compelling narrative for a rising South Florida politician. In Miami and surrounding communities, Cubans and their politics have long been divided among the older generations who left the island after Castro's rise to power and those who migrated later for economic reasons.

The Post reported that documents showed that Rubio's parents left Cuba more than two-and-a-half years before Castro took power in 1959. Rubio insisted that his story was based on family lore, but his official Senate bio was corrected following the Post story to say the senator "was born in Miami in 1971 to Cuban exiles who first arrived in the United States in 1956."

This ain't beanbag, and it's not a private issue of sex, which would have aroused much more interest and would have been much less significant.

GOP politicians got excited about Rubio not only because he's hispanic but also because of the narrative involving parents escaping Communist Cuba to come to the land of the free and the brave.    Rather, Marco's parents were refugees from the regime led by Batista, friend to (some) American politicians and, especially, Mafioso.      It stretches credulity to believe that Senator Rubio actually thought that his parents had escaped from Fidel Castro's clutches.   But it was a convenient falsehood for a young, rising politician.

Selection of Rubio would send a tingle up the leg of the mainstream media, which would contentedly imply that the GOP had proven that it is not the province of rich white men.      Of course, that would not be the point:    it still would be the party of the 1%, no matter the ethnicity of its presidential and vice-presidential nominees.      After a short time, further, it would dawn on the media that Cuban-Americans are not identical to Mexican-Americans or to Puerto Ricans.

We live in a country where, for the first time, we have a president who seems to believe that all young men of one race look alike.      Still, the Cuban experience in the U.S.A. is unlike that of any other people and reaction to a Rubio nomination would correspond far more to other factors, including to what would be a growing realization that he is not ready, in case of emergency, to be President.



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