Robert Scheer: Coulter’s Slur Puts Spotlight on Edwards (Truthdig)

[marmar]

Coulter’s Slur Puts Spotlight on Edwards

Posted on Mar 6, 2007

By Robert Scheer

Thank you, Ann Coulter, for boosting the principled but media-neglected presidential candidacy of John Edwards.
Like many others, upon hearing that she had used an address at a major conservative convention to call Edwards a “faggot,” I quickly clicked to his home page to see his campaign’s reaction—and was happily diverted to more substantive stuff, such as his firm support of universal healthcare and an end to the war in Iraq. No wonder Coulter hates him: Edwards is a Democrat who believes in the progressive heritage of his party and is not afraid to tell the world.

“I want to say something about my party,” Edwards said in a speech at UC Berkeley on Sunday. “I’m so tired of incremental, careful caution. Where is our soul?” He was referring to, among other issues, the party’s failure to deal boldly with “the bleeding sore that is Iraq.”

Unlike rival Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, he has forthrightly apologized for his Senate vote to authorize the war and called for ending it, starting with “immediately” cutting troop levels by half and then withdrawing all troops within the next 12 to 18 months. In a pointed rebuke to the Democratic leadership of Congress, Edwards states on his website, “We don’t need non-binding resolutions; we need to end this war, and Congress has the power to do it. They should use it now.”

On domestic issues, Edwards has hewed to the progressive line he maintained in the 2004 campaign, warning about the growing income inequality in the “two Americas.” As opposed to the Clintons, who still insist that they solved the poverty problem with Bill’s putting an end to the federal welfare program, Edwards points out correctly, “Every day, 37 million Americans wake in poverty.” Stating that “our response to that reality says everything about the character of America,” Edwards has called for a national program to eliminate poverty instead of leaving the poor to the tender mercy of the states as called for in the Clinton welfare reform. ....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070306_coulters_slur_puts_spotlight_on_edwards/

[rodeodance]

1. I have of this also--and am glad to see Edwards get some much needed

media attention (and it sure is delightful to see coulter---and the RW get smucked)