(SPECTATOR.ORG) — There is no conservative writer that I admire more than Ann Coulter. She’s smart as hell and, more importantly, she is courageous. She has always been willing to write what other conservatives believe but don’t have the guts to say in print. She has never played it safe and has certainly never adjusted her opinions for the sake of conforming to the conventional wisdom of Old Guard Republicans. In 2008, for example, she declared that she would not merely vote for, but actively campaign for Hillary Clinton if the Republican Party were foolish enough to nominate John McCain for President: “If you are looking at substance rather than if there is an R or a D after his name, manifestly, if he’s our candidate, than Hillary is going to be our girl, because she’s more conservative than he is.”

But something has happened to Coulter. I don’t have firsthand knowledge that she was kidnapped by RINO Team Six and taken to an offshore medical facility where she was forced to undergo a gruesome surgical procedure, but many of her recent columns suggest that something of the sort must have occurred. What else could explain her endorsement of Mitt Romney? Once immutable where her core convictions were concerned, she has executed a vertigo-inducing volte-face in order to promote a brazen opportunist whose positions on the big issues were the opposite of hers before he began running for President. She relentlessly trashes Republican “moderates” like McCain, yet now supports a candidate who makes the Arizona Senator look like Barry Goldwater by comparison.

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