Rep. Duncan Hunter Endorses Ann Coulter's Hate Speech

Posted by Guest Blogger at 5:04 AM on July 4, 2007.

This post, written by Amanda Terkel, originally appeared on Think Progress

Yesterday on MSNBC's Hardball, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) defended Ann Coulter's attacks on John Edwards, including that she wishes he "had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot."

He said that Elizabeth Edwards's calls to stop making "personal attacks" against her family were attempts to "silence conservative voices." He added that Coulter "is a very articulate spokeswoman for the conservative view" and "closely approaching that level of being a great American." Watch the video on your right.

It's hard to understand how Hunter justifies calling Coulter a "great American." She has repeatedly made anti-gay slurs, compared Muslims to members of the Ku Klux Klan, and advocated assassinating President Clinton. These extremely hateful views aren't what characterize a "great American," or even the majority of conservatives.

Transcript:

SHARPTON: Do you think that Sen. Edwards's wife was out of line, or correct in calling her, saying, "Let's take a lot of the personal attacks out of politics"?

HUNTER: Well, I think what Sen. Edwards's wife said was very consistent with what lots of Democrats and lots of liberals have said, since the amnesty bill went down in flames, and that is that we need to silence conservative voices, in some cases, of course, those voices are going to be of talk radio, whom the Democrats are particularly focusing on.

In this case, Ann Coulter is a very articulate spokeswoman for the conservative view. And I think the idea that when conservatives talk, they're considered to talk in a mean way, and yet when Democrats talk, they're exercising their right to free speech and they're simply conveying a philosophy. Of course, the whole idea in politics is to marginalize the other guy and make him appear to be extreme.

But I think especially because Ann Coulter said nice things about me, I think she's closely approaching that level of being a great American, Al.

Tagged as: hunter, coulter, edwards, election08

Amanda Terkel is Associate Editor for The Progress Report and ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress.