Yesterday afternoon I wrote a short post noting a small irony about Ann Coulter: Even while she was slamming the GOP for “pandering” on issues like abortion and Israel, she herself was using specific language that panders to the small, race-obsessed far-right crowd that is particularly focused on those same issues. This group — known to smear conservatives who disagree with them as “cuckservatives” or “cucks” — has a set of beliefs that go far beyond antipathy toward Israel and indifference toward abortion. Many of them are unapologetically white-nationalists, hate interracial adoption and other “race-mixing” practices, and think about the issue of immigration primarily, if not exclusively, in racial terms.

While this small white-nationalist crowd has latched onto Donald Trump, I don’t think Trump panders to them (his rhetoric departs from theirs significantly on abortion and Israel), I don’t think he cares for them, and I think it’s unfair to hold him responsible for their support. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I feel differently about Coulter. Her shtick has always involved cultivating an extreme online persona, and lately that seems to mean deliberately stoking the cuckservative-obsessed crowd, only to distance herself ever-so-slightly when the Twitter fur flies. She thus enjoys the best of both worlds — praise from the worst and defense from good-faith conservatives who grow tired of PC nonsense and sympathize with many of her arguments.