Ann Coulter’s new book on racial issues

Ann Coulter’s latest book — “Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama” — comes out on Sept. 25, just weeks ahead of Election Day, but it’s not the kind of tome you’d expect from the conservative firebrand.
Mitt Romney, for instance, isn’t mentioned at all. And, although much of the 336-page book discusses President Barack Obama (and Democrats, generally), it also takes a trip down memory lane, exploring events in our nation’s racial history as far back as the Civil War.

Dedicated to “the freest black man in America,” Coulter’s “Mugged,” published by Sentinel/Penguin Group USA, is an exploration of the idea that, as she puts it, “the entire history of civil rights consists of Republicans battling Democrats to guarantee the constitutional rights of black people.”(Of slavery, Coulter calls it “a policy defended to the death of Democrats,” for instance).

On the issue of current events, much of Coulter’s criticism of the president centers on his willingness to allow “others to make despicable racial smears on his behalf.”
“As the New York Times described Obama’s typical campaign strategy back in 2008: ‘This has been [campaign manager David] Axelrod’s career, an eternal return to Chicago and to the politics of race.’”

“Obama has repeatedly returned to the well of racial divisiveness to serve his political ends,” Coulter writes. “His 2008 presidential campaign managed to revive the white guilt that had long since dissipated, and then hinted that the one path to racial reconciliation was to make him president. Only then could we stop talking about race — a conversation he had initiated in the first place.”
“He was a dream come true for liberal elites: They could indulge in self-righteousness on race and get a hardcare leftie into the White House at the same time!”
Coulter even takes on Obama’s biography: “Obama’s childhood consisted of a Beverly Hills, 90210 existence at the prestigious Punahou School in Honolulu (2006 winner of ‘greenest’ school in America!). And yet he still managed to develop a racial hair trigger. Reading about Obama’s race fixation in the middle of suburban banality is akin to reading Hitler’s obsessive musing on his Germanic identity.”
Obama’s one-time pastor and friend, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, also figures prominently in Coulter’s discussion of race and the Democratic Party.

By PATRICK GAVIN