Anne Applebaum again devotes her column in the Washington Post to UK politics — and urges the Republicans to take a lesson from Dave and co in how to be acceptable to the electorate.
The question she doesn’t appear to have asked herself is what, now, is the point of Cameron’s Conservatives — so scared of being branded the Nasty Party they are liable to retreat whenever anyone says boo.
Like David Frum, Anne appears to want a right of centre party she can vote for without feeling too embarrassed. Then she unwittingly puts her finger on the problem.
I can’t think of anything worse for Britain than another term in office for Labor, a party that has left the United Kingdom with a vast public deficit, an awkwardly (but irreversibly) reformed constitution and heavily restricted civil liberties. But the Tory Party’s nasty public image — arrogant, mean, small-minded — is proving difficult to discard.
Yes, but how did the Conservatives acquire their “arrogant, mean, small-minded” image? By enacting the sort of policies that reduce the deficit! You can’t have one without the other.
Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin has been by far the most impressive advocate of the Republican position on health care — one of the few able to rise above shouting ‘Medicare cuts!’ at Obama and make a proper defence of the free market.
It turns out he’s rather well-informed about the situation in the UK too, noting how, for better or worse, the NHS has become a sacred cow before which politicians of the right have to regularly prostrate themselves.
Amusingly, he calls Dave’s reluctance to utter even the mildest criticism of the NHS ‘a pretty pitiful thing to watch’.
It’s possible Ryan, who’s 40, will be a senior figure in any future Republican administration by which time Dave could have his feet firmly under the table in Downing Street. Can’t you just hear that soundbite being gleefully wheeled out by the BBC as they shake hands outside No 10?
Here’s Ryan as quoted by Robert Costa of the National Review.
Just look across the pond at how terrible things have become,” Ryan says. In Britain, even Conservative leader David Cameron is politically unable or unwilling to criticize the National Health Service, and Ryan calls that “a pretty pitiful thing to watch.” President Obama knows this, Ryan says, and wants government health care to achieve the same level of entrenchment here at home.
Somewhere along the way, Republicans cheering on Bart Stupak from the sidelines lost sight of the fact that he and his dozen or so colleagues were actually in favour of health care reform. They were looking for a reason to vote for the bill, not an excuse to vote against it.
So if conservatives now feel betrayed by Stupak and co, they have only themselves to blame.
As for Stupak himself, what a dangerous game he’s been playing. He marched his pro-life supporters up to the top of the hill and then didn’t so much march them down again as push them off the cliff.
In the process, he got himself into a situation where he would be a villain whichever way he finally voted. Politically inept doesn’t even begin to describe it.
And the executive order Stupak “won” as the price of his vote? Maybe he should have a word with David Trimble about how his covering letter from Tony Blair over the Good Friday agreement worked out.
It seems a shame to bring all the number-crunching fun to an end but Bart Stupak, unofficial leader of the anti-abortion Democrats, is holding a press conference at 3pm today our time when it’s expected he’ll announce a deal allowing him to vote for the health care bill.
In which case it’s game over and the bill passes.
UPDATE He “postponed” the press conference and whatever deal there was appears to be off.
Almost as much fun as watching the health care vote unfold is seeing which commentator best predicts which way the Democratic congressmen will go.
Politico divides them into Retirees, Nail Biters, Besieged and Misfits.
Michael Barone is not a Democratic party insider but he knows every district inside out. Here’s his breakdown of the clues to be found in yesterday’s vote on deem and pass.
Meanwhile the Washington Post has a graphic with a verdict on every congressman and the New York Times highlights those still in play.
She thinks it will pass but also says getting through the House is not the end of it. Last night on Anderson Cooper Bill Bennett went a step further and actually said he thinks it won’t pass.
You’d have thought one of the basic principles of feminism is that a woman should not be regarded as an appendage of her husband.
So are women’s organisations up in arms about the case of Ginni Thomas, who, it’s suggested, can’t express political opinions of her own because she’s married to Supreme Court judge Clarence Thomas?
No, apparently they’re not bothered, just as they routinely allow Palin-bashing to go unchallenged.
CBS News seems to be almost alone in reporting on the reaction from conservative blogs, defending the right of married women to be involved in politics.
Here’s how the NBC Nightly News covered the story. They understandably focus on conflict of interest but there’s not even a mention of the feminist angle.
Is it British Week in the Washington Post? After Brown-Truman yesterday comes a piece from Anne Applebaum noting a growing divide in political culture between the US and UK.
What jumps out is the throwaway line that Brown and Obama ‘barely speak to each other’. Plus the observation that Obama’s positions on Afghanistan would be considered ‘far right’ in Britain — or should be, as we’ve pointed out many times before.
MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell is sceptical about the path ahead for the health care bill. His concern seems to be that it’s going to be derailed in the Senate rather than defeated in the House, although that prospect could of course affect how some House members vote. Check out the video from about two minutes in.
Meanwhile, Nancy could not look more excited if the high school quarterback had just invited her to the prom. This is the Speaker on Friday night, about a minute into the CBS News report.
