Ann Coulter’s anti-Semitic tweet revealed something even more embarrassing for her

Ann Coulter earned a strong public rebuke for a series of tweets she sent out the night of the CNN Republican presidential primary debate last week, but she and her critics missed the most embarrassing thing that the longtime political commentator revealed about herself: She doesn’t understand Republican politics very well.

She was criticized for going to the well of “a historic libel against Jews that they hold secret influence.”

Once she started getting hit on Twitter, Coulter defended herself. She’s pro-Israel, she said, but is angry at Republican candidates for talking about issues like the American relationship with Israel on which the party is in near-perfect agreement rather than, say, immigration, which divides GOP candidates and voters. OK, but that doesn’t explain why she assumed that the pandering was to Jews. As an afterthought, and perhaps only after it was pointed out to her, Coulter tweeted that “maybe” the target audience of the pro-Israel rhetoric was evangelical Christians — who vastly outnumber Jews in the US, staunchly back Israel and are a powerful force in GOP presidential primaries.

It’s awful that Coulter’s perpetuating terrible stereotypes about Jewish people, and she should have apologized for it. But the biggest reason for conservatives to stop listening to her is that she simply doesn’t have a full grasp of GOP politics.