Ann Coulter makes some excellent points, in her inimitable way, in her column on the Michael Steele brouhaha, titled “Bill Kristol Must Resign.”

I think that she’s correct that for many Democrats, and in particular Barack Obama, the safe bet is that they have little interest pursuing a successful war in Afghanistan, but have been trapped into a half-hearted support of such a war by their own rhetoric. Specifically, for years they criticized the war in Iraq as “Bush’s war of choice,” and tried to amplify the sense of outrage by claiming that Bush “took his eye off the ball in Afghanistan,” etc. etc. This included then-Senator Obama, and this kind of rhetoric dominated his campaign on the war issue. He simply couldn’t turn around as president and withdraw from Afghanistan. In fact, he was obliged to ramp up the war in some way, and that is what he’s done — although with the caveats that have made fighting it more difficult (a pre-announced withdrawal date, less troops than requested by the general in charge, and absurd rules of engagement that endanger U.S. troops).

I think Ann Coulter is also correct that there is no reason for Republicans to be the party in favor of “permanent war.” That is, they don’t need to blindly support and boost every war policy of a Democratic president. It may not be in the U.S. national interest to pursue an ever-expanding ground war in Afghanistan, if indeed that’s the direction in which this war is going. The half-measures and slow escalation we are witnessing remind us rightly of Vietnam and Lyndon Johnson. (If Bush were still president and pursuing the current policy, nary a day would pass without the word “quagmire” appearing in a New York Times headline.)

So Coulter’s defense of Steele is by far the most effective I’ve seen yet. And I am also very leery of the habit of Republicans to jettison their own for sins far more venial than Democrats get away with committing on any given slow weekend.

Nevertheless, I still think Steele should go. At a minimum, he was making his points clumsily and incoherently, and giving a huge opening to the opposition.

My name is on one of those email lists, where I get messages from the RNC Chairman on the issue of the moment, and they always end with a plea for monetary support. How many Republicans, seeing Michael Steele’s name in their inbox, are, at this point, reaching automatically for their credit cards? He is ineffective, and it’s a real shame to have an ineffective — or even counterproductive — leader of the RNC in this incredibly important election year. He owes it to the party, and more importantly to the conservative cause and to the country, to get out as gracefully as possible, if such a thing still is possible.

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