On February 8, less than 12 hours after her appearance on NBC's Today show, right-wing pundit Ann Coulter delivered a speech to the Young America's Foundation in which she referred to Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (IL) as “B. Hussein Obama” and asserted, “His strongest selling point is that he is one of the least dangerous people I know named Hussein.” As the blog Think Progress noted, Coulter went on to say: “Other than that, Barack's really been kind of coasting on his record, since his first big accomplishment of being born half-black. I keep hearing people say, 'Oh, Obama could never be elected because he's half-black. You know, 'cause we're just such a racist country.' What are they talking about? He wouldn't be running for president if he weren't half-black. He'd be [Sen.] Dick Durbin [D-IL] with less experience.” The speech was broadcast live on the Townhall.com.

During the February 8 speech, Coulter also said that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) “wanted 'I Am Woman' ” as her campaign song, “but that was already taken by [former Sen.] John Edwards [D-NC].” As Media Matters for America noted, in a March 2, 2007, speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Coulter said she could not “really talk about” Edwards because “you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'faggot.' ” The CPAC audience applauded her comment. Several newspapers dropped Coulter's column following her remarks at CPAC.

From Coulter's February 8 Young America's Foundation speech:

COULTER: Thank you. Well, now I'm going to have to give you an Edwards joke for that. So my girl Hillary is really on the move now. Her recent big policy shift is they've changed the campaign song from Celine Dion's “You and I” to something like Big Head Todd and the Monsters' song “Big Sky.” She wanted “I Am Woman,” but that was already taken by John Edwards.

[applause]

Hillary keeps announcing to us that she wants to be judged on her full 35-year record in public service, and, you know, I'm concerned about this, now that I'm on her team. And I'm just thinking, people might ask, whoever heard of Hillary before 1992, when she foist that horny hick on the nation? Her biggest accomplishment is taking what could have been, you know, a small family's neurosis and turning it into a national neurosis. Her strong selling point, though, is almost half the population does not hate her with the hot hate -- hot hate of a thousand suns.

And the only Democrat who can stop her now is B. Hussein Obama. His strongest selling point is that he is one of the least dangerous people I know named Hussein. [applause] Other than that, Barack's really been kind of coasting on his record, since his first big accomplishment of being born half-black. I keep hearing people say, “Oh, Obama could never be elected because he's half-black. You know, 'cause we're just such a racist country.” What are they talking about? He wouldn't be running for president if he weren't half-black. He'd be Dick Durbin with less experience.

When asked how he would respond, in one of the debates, how he would respond to simultaneous attacks on two U.S. cities, Obama said he would call ambulances. “And I'd be right there chasing them,” piped in John Edwards. Yeah, of course you'd want to send bandages to the wounded; I think we knew that. You know, my answer would have been: “which two cities?”

In other words, the Democrats are trying to give away an election they ought to win in a walk.