ROY EDROSO

Peggy Noonan's recent Opinion Journal column compares George W. Bush to FDR. This is not surprising, as our ineloquent Commander in Chief has already been compared by his hagiographers to Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, Ernest Hemingway, and Frodo Baggins. (This has been an effective strategy: Lacking discernible qualities of his own, the President, like polenta, absorbs flavor readily from whatever sauce is poured over him.)

More piquant is Noonan's comparison of Democratic and Republican talking heads:

"Democrats on talk shows tend not to be shy about boring in, talking over guests, hectoring, murmuring sarcastic asides. They may not be courteous but they pound their points home. Republicans, in part because they represent the tougher views of the tougher party, often try to be reasonable and sweet, or intelligent and clever. They are no match..."

Yes, you read that right. One thinks of Bill O'Reilly, John McLaughlin, Rush Limbaugh (the front page of whose website at this writing snarls, "[Pat Schroeder] said it, Rush nailed her on the falsehood, and she backed down. Hey, at least she didn't cry, right?"), and wonders who on earth would think them temperate voices of sweet reason.

But after three paragraphs of this ("Democratic...total war...Republicans...dignified and reasonable"), when our dropped jaws have finally lost all sensation, Noonan attempts to bail out of her own argument: The GOP's "most spirited battlers are either in the White House (Mary Matalin, Torie Clark) or not Republican." Her example of the latter is Ann Coulter--"she is a conservative, not a Republican."

There are many things Coulter is not--for one thing, she is not a National Review columnist since October of last year, when she was ditched from that position. NRO Editor Jonah Goldberg said she was axed in part for "bad-mouthing NR and its employees." (Isn't this remarkably similar to the reason Howell Raines allegedly sacked Andrew Sullivan from the New York Times, about which event conservatives have of late been in high dudgeon? Just asking.)

But does Coulter's conservatism conflict in any meaningful way with Republicanism? Have a look at her archive at Town Hall. She is against handgun control, Muslim extremists, porno, and, of course, both Clintons. She is in favor of ANWR drilling, profiling terrorists, and tax cuts. And as for Bush (a.k.a. FDR, a.k.a. Churchill) himself, she likes him: "an affectionate, playful, completely genuine person -- in every way the molecular opposite of the flimflam artist previously occupying that office. The country can sleep well at night."

Who, witnessing Coulter in print or on Politically Incorrect, would think, "That gal makes a great case for turning the Republicans out of power?"

The key to Noonan's reasoning here is her sunny worldview, in which the good guys are all on her side and the bad guys are all on the Democrats'. In the 2000 World Series, for example, she rooted for the Mets (an activity Crank Watch endorses), and because they were her team, she identified them with the Republicans and the Yankees with the Democrats. "Republicans, God love them, are Mets," she gushed. "They hate the guys who are better. Gore would be a Yankee, Bush would be a Met." (This suggests a strategy to prevent the Twins' possible expulsion from Major League Baseball: align the franchise with John McCain!)

That's where Noonan is coming from. Though Coulter is clearly both a de jure conservative and a de facto Republican operative, she most certainly isn't "reasonable and sweet." She's fierce, as Noonan admits ("[she] could eat her lunch off Paul Begala's head and use his tie as a napkin"). Therefore she can't be a Republican. They're all so nice!

One might excuse Noonan on the grounds of her Catholic mysticism, which causes her to see a struggle between good and evil in everything. But trawl the blogosphere, and you'll find any number of writers who convey mostly conservative ideas and link mostly (except in derision) to conservative sites, but insist they're really liberal, or "liberal conservative," or ""strongly conservative...radical feminist," etc. Perhaps they are showing a refreshing open-mindedness about contemporary issues. Or maybe they just can't bear to associate themselves with the Ann Coulters of the world, though, to my mind, she merely speaks what they think with less timidity, or tact.

It would be nice, in our forward-thinking era, to think that the ancient usages "Right" and "Left" have been swept away, as the "new economy" was alleged, once upon a time, to have swept away the old one. As previously, I maintain great doubts.