(Video) Elizabeth Edwards and Ann Coulter go at it

Elizabeth Edwards confronted conservative columnist Ann Coulter over the phone today on Hardball.  The wife of John Edwards took offense to comments made by Coulter yesterday on Good Morning America.  Coulter said of Edwards, "I'll just wish he'd been killed in a terrorist assassination plot."

Today, Elizabeth called in and asked for Ann to apologize on Hardball.  You might guess how that went:

EDWARDS: You're asking us to participate in a dialogue that is based on hatefulness and ugliness, instead of on the issues.  And I don't think that's serving them or this country very well.

{applause from audience}

MATTHEWS: Thank you very much, Elizabeth Edwards.  So do you want to -- you have all the time in the world to respond.

COULTER: I think we've heard all we need to hear.  The wife of a presidential candidate is asking me to stop speaking.

This turned out to be a net-positive for both Elizabeth and Coulter.  Elizabeth stood up for her husband, and will obviously use this as a way to rally her supporters.  Coulter, as impolite as she always is, will probably include this exchange in her next column.

Elizabeth is right that the political tone in this country needs improvement.  In this exchange, she clearly came across as the more mature of the two -- that is an understatement.

Comments

[DoGoodinNC]

Ann Coulter is one of the worst examples of a human being I've ever seen or heard. Elizabeth and John Edwards are two of the finest.

[granny]

I am watching, in stunned - well, horror, perhaps is the word I'm looking for, as the people of this country fail to be outraged by the remarks of this woman.

Hello?

Are we as a country really willing to be indifferent, and silent, in the face of this kind of vicious, crude use of the public forum to make statements of such violence and hatred, against others? Statements then couched and protected by the insinuations that this is some form of humor; some form of political discourse, in such a way that it passes for benign,passes for an appropriate way to deal with discord and disagreement? That, in a country where youngsters are already so angry, and so uncertain of their values, and the values of their parents generation, they commit mayhem on their campuses?

I believe if you made that statement publically about the members of this Administration, you could, and very likely would, be marched off to an inquistition tank of some kind to be threatened with imprisonment.

Yes, yes. I understand the first amendment rights that this person relies on, though would not protect, I imagine,(at least for others) - but the fact of being free to say it, doesn't mean all the rest of us have to sit in silence.

A country that thought Impeachment might be an appropriate response to ill considered sexual conduct - made public not by the particpants ... and in fact by the illegal recording of telephone conversations that would have landed some of the rest of us in jail...; (and please, don't lets go the route of "he lied" in the face of our current leadership)

That same society doesn't have much to say about this travelling venom dispenser, promoting the idea that it is acceptable, and responsible as a spokesperson, to think of an opponent of your personal ideals in the context of death by murder?

What do we stand for?

[Chief Editor: Todd]

Exactly! It's not equal on both sides. If someone wished that on President Bush, that person would be taken to jail.

But no. Instead, people are raising a fuss that John Edwards is using this as an opportunity to raise money. In reality, by exposing what Coulter did, Elizabeth was helping set the bar high so that anyone else who engages in that kind of vile hatred will be exposed.

[Birdy Lee]

Ladies and gentlemen, we're proud to present the most bonkers woman in the history of bonkerdom.

[middleclassguy]

Let's see, it was ok for an NPR pundit to wish death upon Jesse Helms. It is ok to accuse the President of all sorts of heinous crimes, it is ok to basically use vitriol to lambast Republicans.

It is not ok to lambast Democrats in the same manner. I guess the freedom of speech only applies to Democrats. We do still have freedom of speech in this country, don't we?

[middleclassguy]

I forgot one other thing. You are slamming Ms. Coulter, yet there are three ads for her and her columns on your web page. I guess it is ok to try and make money advertising Ms. Coulter while insulting her at the same time. True Liberal hypocrisy at its finest.

[ne_plus_ultra_1]

This just prompted me to order her most recent book.

Marry ME Ann. We'll move to Utah and get a big house for all of my children from both of my wives...