Richard Cohen has a little screed against Ann Coulter in the WaPo.

May I say something about Ann Coulter? She is a half-wit, a termagant, a dimwit, a blowhard, a worthless silicone nothing, physically ugly and could be likened to Eva Braun, who was Hitler’s mistress. As it happens, these are all descriptions or characterizations Coulter uses for others in her book, “Slander.” It ought to be called “Mirror.”

The book is now the No. 1 bestseller in the nation. If I were writing this column as she has written the book, everything I wrote above would be footnoted. For instance, the deft Eva Braun crack was aimed at Katie Couric. Coulter calls the “Today” host “the affable Eva Braun of morning TV.” You can, as they say, look it up (p. 181).

Well, Richard, that’s the point, isn’t it? When she makes those charges, she at least attempts to back them up. You may say it, but don’t expect anyone to take you seriously, because you offer no evidence for them. “A worthless silicone nothing”? On what basis would you make such an accusation?

Whatever you think of Ms. Coulter’s stuff, this is just playground tactics, e.g. “I know you are, but what am I?”

He goes on, in his blind way, to once again laughably attempt to put up a defense against the notion that he and his colleagues are overwhelmingly left liberal.

Is it time for an intervention? I ask this because such anger, such intolerance, such rage, such a compulsion to denigrate and to distort is hardly based on any reality. If, as Coulter says, liberals control the media and much of the animal and plant kingdoms, then how is it that the president du jour and others of recent times — Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Bush the Elder — happen to be conservatives? I must be missing something here.

Yes, Richard, you are. You’re missing the fact that there’s a difference between a Republican and a conservative.

Eisenhower a conservative? He who cautioned us against the military-industrial complex?

Nixon a conservative? He of wage and price controls, and fifty-five mile-per-hour speed limits? He of “we’re all Keynesians now”?

Pro-choice Gerald Ford a conservative?

Bush the Elder a conservative? He of the broken tax pledge?

Bush the Younger a conservative? He of the increasing federal takeover of education, of steel tariffs, of disarmament in the cockpits, of huge government growth?

There’s only one conservative in that list–Ronald Reagan. But when you’re steeped in a leftist stew, you see anyone to the right of yourself (who you of course view as a reasonable, middle-of-the-road type) to be conservative.

Yes, Ann can be quite caustic, but she’s also often funny and clever, unlike this lackwit column by Mr. Cohen.