Circuses and bread

Politics: At annual gathering of conservatives, Ann Coulter’s antics steal attention from life-and-death issues | Becky Perry, Marvin Olasky

One day's agenda for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington early this month read like the playbill for presidential auditions, with nearly every Republican candidate dutifully lined up:

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) at 8:30 a.m., former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-Ark.) at 10:00 a.m., former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani at 12:00 p.m., Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) at 1:00 p.m., Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) at 1:30 p.m., former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-Mass.) at 2:45 p.m.

And then columnist Ann Coulter, coming on right after Romney, grabbed the headlines with a string of quips about Democratic candidates that concluded with a statement both wrong and stupid: "I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word faggot, so I—so kind of an impasse, can't really talk about Edwards."