Free Demonic by Ann Coulter

premiere of Fahrenheit 9/11 and emerged endorsing Moore’s wacko Unocal conspiracy theory. “I believe it after seeing that,” McAuliffe said. Show me former RNC chairman Michael Steele saying, “I believe the birthers” and I’ll give 90 percent of my book profits to the Hugo Chávez reelection campaign.
    Other Democrats who attended Moore’s movie screening include Senators Tom Daschle, Tom Harkin, Max Baucus, Ernest Hollings, Debbie Stabenow, and Bill Nelson and Representatives Charles Rangel and Jim McDermott. Show me a half dozen Republican senators attending a birther movie premiere and I’ll say “both sides” are the Party of the Mob.
    In 2004, Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark proudly accepted Moore’s endorsement. Moore was an honored guest at theDemocratic National Convention that year, sitting with former president Jimmy Carter. What is the likelihood that a birther will be sitting with former President Bush at the 2012 Republican National Convention?
    Democratic fundraisers have been headlined by Rosie O’Donnell—a prominent 9/11 “truther,” who believes the World Trade Center was blown up with explosives, not taken down by terrorists in airplanes. In 2003, Democratic presidential candidate and future Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean approvingly cited the left-wing fantasy that Saudi Arabia had warned Bush in advance about the 9/11 attacks. He promised a caller to National Public Radio that, if elected, he would investigate. Why are Democrats never asked if they really want the support of people who think the Bush family was in on the 9/11 attack?
    There’s something else Representative Bill Posey didn’t do, despite his alleged status as a “birther.” He didn’t hold congressional hearings costing taxpayers millions of dollars to investigate a kooky conspiracy theory cooked up by Lyndon LaRouche—as Senate and House Democrats did with LaRouche’s October Surprise conspiracy theory. LaRouche was a plausible source: You’ll recall that he hatched the idea that the Queen of England ran an international drug-smuggling ring. Indeed, LaRouche was the second-most-ridiculous person named “Lyndon” to ever run for president of the United States.
    Before it is completely washed down the memory hole, let’s review this spectacular Democratic conspiracy theory: The October Surprise.
    To set the stage: It was 1980 and Ronald Reagan was running for president against the incumbent Jimmy Carter. Reagan was the sunny, popular right-wing governor of California. Carter was the bumbling, egotistical coward bent on surrendering to the Soviets, who claimed to have been attacked by a giant swimming rabbit. 8 Carter’s economic policies had produced a 21 percent interest rate, a 17 percent mortgage rate, and a 15 percent inflation rate in the coveted “hat trick” of presidential incompetence. Not only that, but he had produced skyrocketing unemployment.
    Carter’s brilliant strategic ploy of abandoning the shah of Iran, an important American ally, soon led to soaring oil prices and, of course,Islamic lunatics holding fifty-two Americans hostage in Tehran, where they remained for 444 days, until Carter was safely removed from office by the American people. (Carter’s abandonment of the shah also gave rise to the global Islamofacist movement we’re still dealing with today.) Under Carter, Americans were permitted to put gas in their cars only on alternate days, based on whether the last number on their license plates was an even or odd number. The price of oil had risen 154 percent since the beginning of Carter’s presidency. And these, mind you, were Carter’s accomplishments. He also gave us Ruth Carter, Billy Carter, and a sweater-based energy policy.
    With all that going for them—plus that old Mondale magic—Democrats were dumbstruck that they lost the 1980 election. (Nor could they understand, incidentally, why gas prices, inflation, and interest rates shot down