Blog P.I.

The last few weeks have not been good ones for the Edwards campaign, with professional blowhard Bill Donohue shouting the unfortunate comments of short-lived Edwardsville blogress Amanda Marcotte into the New York Times and Washington Post — and Marcotte herself prolonging the story in Salon and the Austin Chronicle. Nor were they helped when Lindsay Beyerstein of Majikthise filed her own Salon column confirming Elizabeth Edwards’ involvement in blog strategy and claiming she had warned Edwards staffers of how a netroots hire could go wrong.

One reason the incident has been so bad for the Edwards campaign is that it turned an asset — his widespread support among liberal bloggers — into a liability. While few among the netroots actually abandoned him, it exposed the possibility that a wedge could be driven between them — and his campaign hasn’t regained its footing since.

Until now, that is, and John Edwards has none other than Ann Coulter parody Ann Coulter to thank as the leftosphere is working overtime this weekend to turn this year’s CPAC — where Coulter referred to Edwards as a “faggot” — into the political equivalent of this year’s NBA All-Star weekend in Las Vegas (Pacman Jones or no). Call it a reverse Perlstein: the leftosphere always liked Edwards. Now they finally have a reason to rally around him again.

The incident won’t necessarily help him with Beltway handicappers who fault the campaign’s decision-making, although they should be reassured that Edwards quickly released an e-mail letter from campaign chairman David Bonior, pictured below, and worked it into a fundraising pitch, asking for “Coulter Cash”:

Note that they are making the video available on their own site — this is to their credit, as traditional campaign wisdom holds that you don’t want to keep a negative story going. But this attack was so meanspirited and witless and obviously saying far more about Coulter than Edwards that there is virtually no downside.

The rightosphere can denounce her all they like — calling her a “verbal suicide bomber” and likening her to David Duke and Michael Moore — but they can’t make up for the YouTube-ready audience laughter and applause that greeted Coulter’s remarks.

For the same reason, Howard Dean’s call for the GOP frontrunners to denounce Coulter’s remarks was pretty smart, too. He got his presidential denunciations on short order, but some conservatives refocused their ire on him and effectively defended Coulter. Liberal bloggers may have painted a picture of the conservative blogosphere as a mere appendage of the right-wing establishment, but there’s no way Glenn Greenwald will let Ed Morrissey speak for the movement on this one.

Only CPAC can do that now. Will the conference organizers announce that Ann Coulter will not be invited next year? Her post-9/11 “invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity” column got her axed from NRO, so they would even have the cover of precedent. Or are they too fearful losing Coulter’s College Republican fan base?

P.S. What do we make of the fact that PoliPundit blogger and Duncan Hunter campaign paid staffer Michael Illions is one of the few conservative bloggers publicly standing by her, while this same week the Hunter campaign cut loose two South Carolina operatives for making bigoted statements? Just asking.

P.P.S. Beyerstein got at least one thing wrong in her Salon column — Matt Stoller, whom she cited twice as a better potential hire than herself or Marcotte, missed the boat entirely as this was breaking last night:

I called a contact at the Edwards campaign for a response. Nothing yet. It would be stupid to respond to Coulter, but it’s a good idea to hang Coulter around Romney and Giuliani’s neck.

Right. Certainly nothing you’d want to use to solicit campaign contributions…