Well, jump up and slap the mule:

ABC News' Rick Klein Reports: Former Sen. John Edwards on Friday fired the latest round in his ongoing verbal feud with Ann Coulter, calling her a "she-devil" at a public event before quickly adding that he shouldn't engage in name-calling.

Ah, yes, those of you who grew up in the south will recognize this as a variant on the "bless her heart" feint, which allows one to say the most brutally honest and satisfying things with a certain measure of impunity. And it means that between the Edwards family and Ann Coulter, the gloves have completely come off.

Edwards, D-N.C., was railing against the right-wing media -- including Fox News and Rush Limbaugh -- when he reminded a crowd in Burlington, Iowa, that his wife stood up to Coulter in a public spat earlier this summer.

"We know these people. We know their game plan. They're going to attack us personally," Edwards said. "They attacked Elizabeth personally, because she stood up to that she-devil Ann Coulter. … I should not have name-called. But the truth is -- forget the names -- people like Ann Coulter, they engage in hateful language."

This is more like it. Did you see that? It is the time-honored SCUD missile of southern acrimony. "Ann Coulter is a bottle-blond chihuahua on crank, but I shouldn't call names, of course."

It is the same conversational hinge upon which you can swing something like, "Bless his heart, but I believe he's the only preacher in captivity who can eat peanuts through a fence" or "Why, she doesn't have the sense that god gave a head of cabbage, bless her heart."

I like seeing the Edwards team on the offensive. Especially against the flailing maniacs of far-right broadcasting. Coulter has crossed the line so many times, and yet so few people press back with any kind of insistence. And it's precisely the, "Oh, ignore her maybe she'll go away" behavior set that allows her to keep popping up on Good Morning America and The Today Show like herpes.

I guess that Coulter (and the big-money interests who control her) figured John and Elizabeth as easy marks, soft targets. But see, I've grown up around many, many southern people whose honeyed, gracious demeanor hid the internal steeliness of Spartans (especially with regards to threats and attacks toward their families). I think that Coulter's decision to try and take on the whole Edwards family may well prove to have been a Grave Tactical Error.

Bless her heart.