Take It Easy, Ann, and Train Your Fire Elsewhere

By Ed Morrow
https://amgreatness.com/2019/03/17/take-it-easy-ann-and-train-your-fire-elsewhere/
March 17, 2019

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

You know we like you, Ann. We’ve liked you for years. We’ve bought your books by the boxcar. We like the way you say stuff to TV cameras that other conservatives wouldn’t whisper into their pillows at 3 a.m. We like the way you make hostile crowds laugh while looking sideways at each other to check if it’s OK. We aren’t so sure about you getting chummy with Bill Maher—he’s just using you and doesn’t really like you like we do.

But liking you aside, we regret to say, you are, as President Trump says, “wacky.” We’ll hold off on the “nut job” part.

You have always been a loose cannon, routinely firing off remarks that your fans have had to explain as innocuous to the perpetually offended. You were just tweaking them, we insist, and they were trying to turn a tweak into a deadly insult for which they could demand an effusive apology followed by your exile from polite society.

Often, it was an enjoyable kerfuffle, for you are a funny member of the punditry. But sometimes defending your more provocative remarks was tiresome. Why make us fight peculiar, unnecessary battles of no strategic value? We dutifully did, wondering, a little bit, if maybe you might be just stirring up a fight to get the world to watch you wave your banner high above a tumultuous scuffle that you pointlessly provoked. You aren’t shy, and we like that, but conservatives are conservatives because they believe in Americanism, not Coulterism.

This brings us to what you’ve been up to recently.

We, too, are disappointed that President Trump hasn’t built a nice, tall wall along our southern border, one that a curious giraffe might strain to peer over but not illegals, not even if two or three stood upon each other’s shoulders. We, too, think that open borders will destroy the America we love and that millions of illegal immigrants love to immigrate  into illegally. But we don’t think Trump is, as you declare, a “con man,” an “idiot,” a “liar,” “lazy,” “incompetent,” and so on.

When you describe him as such, you aren’t adding an inch to that wall. You are making it easier for his opponents to stop him from building it. They’re delightfully using your words to mock Trump and you.They think the Twitter spat you started with the president is hilarious. Of course, Trump is at fault, too. He shouldn’t let you bait him into responding to your taunts, but it is in his nature, as we all know, to snap back when he is criticized.

Trump may be president, but millions of people voted for someone else. All of Hollywood and all the news chatterers hate his every atom. Three-quarters or more of the world believes what they’ve heard about him and hate him, too. Most of the leaders of his own party want him to go away so they can roll over and get their bellies scratched by those they claim to oppose. You should be a little charitable. You’ve made a career out of getting people angry with you. Trump is a relative newbie at it, and look at how he’s leapt far past your efforts. Shouldn’t that get a little respect from you?

You say Trump should have done more for the wall before the midterms, when Republicans had both the House and the Senate and he held the presidential pen, but his position wasn’t as strong as you seem to think. There was absolute opposition from the Democrats and just tepid support from Republicans. He chose to work on the economy first, knowing that a bad economy would produce midterm results that would worsen the situation. A good economy didn’t give him the electoral results he hoped for, but did forestall a blue tidal wave that surely would have strengthened the impeachment effort.

You may remember that before Trump had even sat down in the Oval Office the Democrats had set up the Russian collusion hoax and the deep state was humming away, scheming their feverish dreams of presidential perp walks accompanied by the sounding of sanctimonious horns of outrage by the media. Trump forced from office would have meant open borders for the remaining years of a crippled Pence presidency then borders opened wider under a Democratic president ushered in like Jimmy Carter to cleanse a supposedly disgraced White House.

Imagine a Carter with our new socialist kiddies in Congress handing him idiocies to sign. Trump’s emphasis on the economy prevented that, at least for now.

The government shutdown was a Hail Mary that failed. It’s easy to say Trump should have held out, but the Democrats made it clear they would be delighted to see the economy tank while the media blamed Trump and the Republicans. It would be “happy days are here again,” with Trump as Hoover and whatever Democrat next nominated as FDR reborn. A couple more weeks of media bleating about federal workers facing foreclosure and rummaging through dumpsters for food would have pushed skittish Republicans into open rebellion. Trump had to cave. Declaring a national emergency to build the wall was his fail-safe.

What we need from you, Ann, isn’t recriminations about what might have been. The question for conservative punditry is where to direct attention now. Twelve Republican senators voted to block Trump’s emergency declaration. Which of them do you consider idiots, con men, liars, and incompetents? I suggest Mitt Romney checks off a lot of those boxes and you could add a few more unpleasant characteristics. He says he’s against open borders but cringes at the word “wall.” He prefers “barrier.” I suspect the Democrats could get him to accept a speed bump somewhere between Las Vegas and the Utah border at some rest area on I-25.

The Despicable Dozen need to be chased out of the weeds and run up to the top of the nearest bare-branched tree to be exposed so their constituents can know them for what kind of critters they are. You are a clever writer. Write them up nice and proper, and do it quick.

And how about Democrats from conservative constituencies? Maybe you could spook a few of them into remembering that Americans don’t like illegal immigration. Go after the leaders of the opposition, and it will stiffen the spines of the wall builders.

We need the border wall to preserve America as a great nation, but it isn’t all we need. As illegal immigration is reduced from the south it will increase elsewhere and there are other foreign and domestic threats to America.

Conservatives got lucky in 2016. The electorate recognized Trump as the better alternative to the Wicked Witch of Chappaqua. It may be different in 2020. The Democrats might pick a less odious candidate. If they successfully block the wall and disappointed wall supporters blame Trump, he might lose their votes. This could cost him the election and that means no wall at all. And no conservative response to those other foreign and domestic threats.

So, Ann, please lay off Trump. There are other targets better deserving your fire. We don’t need you going all wacky and doing a Rosie O’Donnell impression. One of her is one more than enough.