In an appearance on Hannity, conservative pundit Ann Coulter raised a few eyebrows with comments she made regarding co-front-runner Mitt Romney and the rest of the GOP field.
“The two most conservative candidates… still standing are Michele Bachmann and Mitt Romney. And Michele Bachmann… I think sh’es terrific by the way – but she is just a Congresswoman and she’s never been a governor. I think she’s also hurt a little bit by the resemblance to Sarah Palin. In the same way, I think Perry is hurt by his resemblance to Bush.”
As Hannity points out by showing a speech Coulter gave at CPAC, the conservative pundit’s not always been so high on Romney. In that CPAC speech back in February, she predicted ”If you don’t run Chris Christie, Romney will be the nominee and we’ll lose.”
So, what’s changed?
From RCP:
“What I changed my mind about is whether — by the way I changed my mind three months after that on a FOX News show because the economy was so bad. I said, look, I’m generally a pessimist for running against — actually, maybe I’m not. We have a popular Democratic president, who does has an attractive family, has the entire mainstream behind him, and he’s an incumbent. That is why I thought the candidate we ran would lose. I no longer think. I now think Obama has a glass jaw, and I said that a few months after that statement, by the way. It’s not really that big of change — we don’t know if my prediction was wrong now — what I am saying now is of the available candidates, Romney is by far the most conservative, tied with Michele Bachmann. And he has the proven ability to win in a state like Massachusetts.”
I thought for a while that Coulter was simply warming up to Romney to soften the blow when he ultimately became the Party’s nominee. Now I’m not so sure. I think the more likely scenario here is that Coulter is weighing two decades of commentary critical of Gingrich versus two election cycles of bashing Romney. Which one is easier to walk back / walk away from? The second-choice you never fell in love with or the Republican icon that simply lost his way?
