Cameron the 'Tea Party Tory'

Rhoda Klapp

First, those septics are deluded.

Second, it seems the UK press has just noticed the tea party, and have decided the line to take is essentially the democrat/liberal one, that they are all loonies, racist etc. So to link in Cameron to them, however sbsurd, is to tar him with that brush.

Vulture

Oh, I don't know. Pat and Dave have quite a lot in common.

Like losing elections for example.

JohnOfEnfield

Do you mean branding Maggie as Tip O'Neil?

Mind-blowing.

finchy

If David Cameron succeeds in closing the budget deficit and the UK continues to grow, I wonder if he will then follow Lord Keynes' advice by running a modest budget surplus?

REPay

There is a lot of interest here in the states about the UK. I heard a TV commentator say that it exhilirating to see someone do something other than keep throwing money at the problem. NPR (the BBC equivalent) is much more nuanced than the BBC whose statist stance and use of worst case scenarios and statistics (25% still being used and the ridiculous idea of 500,000 redundancies in the public sector) mask the gradualist nature of the cuts.

Hysteria

I think the Americans have this wrong. The Tea Party stands for small government, individual freedom, adherence to the constitution and balanced budgets. Cameron may get one out of four (maybe) - but he has a long way to go to demonstrate his support for the rest....

London Calling

As an O’Neill descendant I feel obliged to read the T- Leaves for you for free on this occasion. On further inspection if you turn it, it reads ‘Made In China’…oops sorry, wrong side up …oh dear…it’s a bit bitty I’m afraid…however I can make out Christine O’Donnell reading the American Constitution through gritted teeth, or she could be chewing a humbug I’m not sure…

David Cameron a Mad Hatter?… enough said …move along Thank Q…

JohnPage

The principle free wet centrist as a right winger? Oh please.

David Lindsay

Buchanan is not a Tea Party person: they are not really or primarily "culture war" people, whereas Buchanan is; and that is before we even start about foreign policy. So his comparison of Cameron to the Tea Party is by no means necessarily complimentary.

Trafalgar

Vulture, if Cameron had "lost" the election he wouldn't now be PM.

Robert Eve

If Cameron is a 'Tea Party Tory' then Gordon Brown was a good Prime Minister.

Archie

Hysteria, you forgot patriotism, now a dirty word here, but high on the TP agenda

Occasional Ostrich

Hysteria

Yup, I reckon Pat Buchanan sees just what he wants to see.

porkbelly

Only in the Spectator would a fringe figure like Pat Buchanan still be taken seriously. In one sentence he displays his ignorance of Dave, Maggie and Tip - a veritable hat-trick.

But this silliness does serve the useful purpose of underscoring the diverging paths of the European social democracies who are slashing benefits, spending, and government payrolls and the United States which is plummeting down the Keynesian path to ruinous debt and inflation. This could have awkward implications: will an impoverished U.S. continue to pay for the defense of a prosperous Europe?

TomTom

You cannot re-balance Western economies so long as China inflates the price of raw materials and deflates the price of finished goods.

Bretton Woods REQUIRED Tariffs on Persistent-Surplus Countries but Japan, Germany, Taiwan, Korea were able to use undervalued exchange rates to export just as China does today. Instead of re-balancing the world economy we simply print money to devalue our currency and raise taxes

an ex-tory voter

Cameron is to Tea Party as Brown is to prudence

Neil Anderson

I'm with Robert Eve. It is a nonsense to link them, the English Defence League have more in common, but it is a uniquely American brand of idiocy. Pat Buchanan - there's a name I thought had long been consigned to the dustbin of history. Please don't quote him in this paper, unless it is to mock...

David Lindsay

By comparing the Tea Party to Cameron, a paleocon such as Buchanan is saying that the Tea Party are not proper conservatives.

Verity

Patrick Buchanan has dubbed Cameron "the Tea Party Tory". This demonstrates nothing except the ignorance of British politics on the part of American commentators.

They just don't follow British politics.

Buchanan knows diddly about Cameron except how Cameron has presented himself in public. He clearly doesn't know that Cameron could not get himself elected after 14 years of the most criminally destructive government in British history, and that in order to slither under the door of Downing St Cameron had to form a partnership with a soft left party.

Believe me, Mr Buchanan, if Davey lad had been Tea Party material, he would have been swept into office on a tidal wave of electoral approval.

A. Smith

'Tea Party Tory' my arse.

TGF UKIP

Just reinforces the belief that Americans take little real interest in anyone else's politics.

Can't help noticing though the habitual London categorisation of the "American HARD Right." Presumably they must have a "soft" right. James' pal David Brooks, perhaps.

Verity

TGF UKIP - Tee hee.

Mr Buchanan, do you have two tea bags for a 10?

Thucydides

Verity opines that "if Davey lad had been Tea Party material, he would have been swept into office on a tidal wave of electoral approval."

No, I rather think not. Like Buchanan, she clearly knows little about current British politics.

yank

Why do you Spectator types continue on this foolish path? You clearly have nothing like the depth of understanding necessary to decipher Buchanan's comments, why are you embarrassing yourselves like this, again?

At the superficial, Buchanan is merely using some polemical rap lyrics, complete with politician/celebrity reference, to take a shot at the big government types over here, who want to spend bigger. You really need look no further beyond than that.

Layer over that Mr. Buchanan's harnessing of a bit of the latent anglophobia here that he, a historical supporter of the rhetorical use of "Irish confetti" (rocks thrown by street demonstrators over here), has always got in the back of his mind, and can't resist, and you begin to gain some of the required depth of understanding, as to how it might relate to you. But even that is understated or unstated in his presentation. It's really not about you, so get over yourselves.

We're both anglophobic and anglophilic here. But to TGF's point, we don't give a rip about the sausage making over there, we only care about the sausage.

But sometimes, the sausage making requires a bit of that Irish confetti to be deployed... and it seems you lot may have forgotten about that.

Then again, sometimes it requires a bit of a slow walk, and Mr. Cameron and company sure fill that portion of the bill, I'd say.

Be careful characterizing the various families of conservative over here. Remember, "conservative" is not a dirty word over here, as it is over there on the pile of rocks. Many claim the mantle, of many stripes, and with many it is just that... a claim and nothing more. That's really the point of the "Tea Party", separating the wheat from the chaff, the logrollers from those who truly believe in limited government.