Ok, we all know by now that Ann Coulter hates 9/11 family members (at least those who actually have the guts to question our fearless leader.) But I think that her comments will do more to damage her in the long run than people might think. She has spent, more or less, the past four and a half years breathlessly talking about 9/11 and how it justifies everything that Bush has done. Whenever she speaks at colleges, if someone mentions Iraq, the Patriot Act, or racial profiling, she just spews "9/11! We were attacked that day!" By calling the very people that indirectly give her rhetorical cannon-fodder to attack us, she is metaphorically biting the current events-hand that feeds her. Gee, I can also think of another person who has done this.
Fred Phelps would also seem to be a natural ally of the hard-right, what with his gay-bashing and all. I'm sure that the members of Free Republic agree that gay should be stoned to death, just as much as they agree with Ann Coulter that Timothy McVeigh should have blown up the New York Times building (she made this comment in a August '02 interview. Every conservative I've mentioned this quote to defends it saying that she's just joking...I'm sure they would think differently if it was Michael Moore.)
However, Coulter and Phelps both cross a line of insanity that goes BEYOND your typical wing-nuttery. Phelps links every imaginable tragedy to gays, from our soldier's funerals, to the deaths of the Sago miners last January.
(" Thank God for the lightning bolt that caused the explosion that trapped the Sago miners. God killed them and cast them into hell. ") Calling the Jersey Girls "the witches of East Brunswick" is on his level.
I think that Coulter has crossed a point from which there is no return. I don't think that she will get any puff-pieces out of Time or the Today Show any time soon.