At this point I'm not entirely clear what those principles might be, but it may end up being defined by young GOP activists like Meghan McCain, daughter of Sen. John. She writes regularly for The Daily Beast, she's got a blog where she reveals she's got good musical taste -- listening to Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and she's Twittering regularly. At 24 she is a young voice, and while she may not be the intellectual center of the party, she's raising issues in a sensible, refreshingly unpretentious way. (Because as Jonah Goldberg and so many others have shown us, even young Republicans can write pretentiously.) And if you still don't believe me, she's the first really significant Republican voice that I know of to declare that she's against Ann Coulter:
To make matters worse, certain individuals continue to perpetuate negative stereotypes about Republicans. Especially Republican women. Who do I feel is the biggest culprit? Ann Coulter. I straight up don’t understand this woman or her popularity. I find her offensive, radical, insulting, and confusing all at the same time. But no matter how much you or I disagree with her, the cult that follows Coulter cannot be denied...
...Coulter could be the poster woman for the most extreme side of the Republican Party. And in some ways I could be the poster woman for the opposite. I consider myself a progressive Republican, but here is what I don’t get about Coulter: Is she for real or not? Are some of her statements just gimmicks to gain publicity for her books or does she actually believe the things she says? Does she really believe all Jewish people should be “perfected” and become Christians? And what was she thinking when she said Hillary Clinton was more conservative than my father during the last election?..
...I am not suggesting that extreme conservatism wasn’t once popular, nor am I suggesting I should in any way be any kind of voice for the party. I have been a Republican for less than a year. Still, even after losing the election, I find myself more drawn to GOP ideals and wanting to fight for the party’s resurgence. And if figureheads like Ann Coulter are turning me off, then they are definitely turning off other members of my generation as well. She does appeal to the most extreme members of the Republican Party—but they are dying off, becoming less and less relevant to the party structure as a whole...
...More so than my ideological differences with Ann Coulter, I don’t like her demeanor. I have never been a person who was attracted to hate or negativity. I don’t believe in scare tactics and would never condone or encourage anyone calling President Obama a Muslim. But controversy sells and Coulter is nothing if not controversial. Everything about her is extreme: her voice, her interview tactics, and especially the public statements she makes about liberals. Maybe her popularity stems from the fact that watching her is sometimes like watching a train wreck.
You goP, girl.
Even better, she was just on Rachel Maddow's show and they were great together.
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Now I'm guessing that even if/when her friends list ascends to lead the GOP I'll still be voting Democratic, mostly, although who knows what happens to that party once Obama's had his (please, Lord) eight, but America could do a lot worse that a class of Republicans who don't make a living demonizing Liberals. She seems like a decent, together young individual without an axe to grind, so it'll be interesting to see how she'll grow in her political thinking and potential influence over the years. Is she already part and parcel of the military-industrial complex, or maybe a more benign mutation of it? Is her public stance in favor of gay marriage going to help make that right a reality?
There's a second segment as well, with its own charms, including more of the mutual respect between these two political women:
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Y'know, that she turned out like this actually speaks well of her father.
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