The Republicans are where the Tories were in 1997

Bill Rees

Things are not necessarily as bad for the Republicans as they seem.
To get as many votes as he did (47%) after fighting such an inept campaign suggests that the Republican constituency is still a very large one.
But the real problem that the Republicans and Conservatives face is that the mainstream media in each country is fervently in favour of the other side, with the BBC dominating the agenda in the UK.
Its recent kid-gloves treatment of Gordon Brown, for example, is an audacious example of the media suspending its critical faculties.
What the Conservatives and Republicans need to do is work out how to balance up the media, otherwise they are both in for a long, hard slog.
Unfortunately, it is much easier said than done.

Alexander

I'd go a step further than Bill does. It took the largest financial crises in a generation in addition to two wars and a decade of stagnant wages for Obama to finally take the lead away from McCain in September. That is not a ringing endorsement of Obama’s agenda, rather a repudiation of the failures of the Bush Administration.

The trick is for the Democrats to make incremental changes without scaring the population at large. Last time that they held all the levers of power, in '92, they overplayed their hand. The result was fourteen years of Republican domination of the House (1994-2006).

If the Democrats push their agenda too hard, expect to see a Republican resurgence in '10. 2010, of course, is a census year, and that means redistricting. If the Republicans regain control of state houses and state legislatures because the Democrats overplayed their hands, expect sufficient gerrymandering of congressional districts to see Republican domination of the House till at least 2020.

At this very early stage, before he has even taken the oath of office, the jury is still out on the success of the Obama presidency. That’s a good thing – we shouldn’t prejudge him as either a success or a failure this early in the game.

Ray

"The Tory defeats of 2001 and 2005 show that (attacking immigration) doesn’t actually win votes. If the Republicans decide that sending illegals back across the Rio Grande will propel them back to the White House, they could destroy themselves as a viable political force."

Don't these remarks just prove what both the Tory and the Republican (Ron Paul-Patrick Buchanan) right have always maintained: namely, that the commitment of the liberal-left ruling elite to encouraging mass immigration has naff all to do with either compassion or economic efficiency and everything to do with both electoral advantage and the destruction of traditional cultural norms (as well as the demoralising of those voters who ascribe to them.

As for Hague's warning about Britain becoming a 'foreign land', thankfully even a few brave Labour MPs are now sticking their head above the parapet to smell the coffee!

TDK

I think the final paragraph s here by mistake. It matches a paragraph in Dalrymples article.

Incidentally the 1997 UK election had Conservative 30.7%, Labour 43.2%.
By contrast the US election had Rep 46.0%, Dem 52.7%.

The US result doesn't even begin to compare to the 4 to 3 Labour result of 1997.

Patrick Quigley

What a load of tosh!

'the best politician of the generation'? Why? How? What has he done for God's sake? We now have the most left wing leader in American history who has ties to and has firm support from some of the most radical elements in the U.S.A.

The modern day limp wristed Tories are no gauge to success. That is why they lead the most unpoular, useless, amoral, clueless government in history by only 6% in the polls.

Any 'right wing' conservative party with the courage of their convictions would trounce this rabble!

Unfortunately, the modern day Useless Tories have no courage, principle, idea or will!

About time you renewed your New Labour membership Mr Forsyth!!!

John Bull

The points about media bias and phenomenal spending are well-made and true, but they miss the risky option of the vast Democrat electoral machine employed to research those who in the past could not only not be bothered to turn out and vote, but couldn't equally be bothered to register their right to vote in time.

The identification and motivating of this traditionally left-wing 'benefits-dependent mass' of normally apolitical but marginally racist ( perhaps even rabidly racist ) 'potential' voters, was a clever but cynical move by the Democrats.

How this transforms into voter-confidence once all the hype dies down remains to be seen, but these are dangerous times for not only America, and the same media which so overtly propelled Obama into a position of power will very quickly turn to his assassination once the smoke clears.

The novelty of a black President of the USA does not sell air-time or newspapers long-term, so Obama had better come up with working answers to questions he clearly has no clue about - and soon !

John Schuh

Virginia, North Carolinan Georgia, and of course Florida are affected because all are affected by the immigration--no, not Hispanics, but Yankees. They are seeking to get away from the cold and tax-burdens of the Northeast. Ironically, they introduce the same liberal virus into state politics, and over time will foul their new nests, meanwhile they get a respite from high taxes and congratulate themselves on their high-mindedness and superiority to the natives--typical colonial attitudes.

In Ohio, on the other hand, Obama got fewer than 100,000 more votes than Kerry but McCain almost a quarter-million fewer than Bush. Conclusion: Many Republicans either stayed home or died, and Republicnas don't count tombstones. .

Chingford Man

I've pointed it out elsewhere but in 2008 in a rotten electoral cycle the GOP still got 46-47pc not the 30pc of John Major. Thankfully there is no real sign of the GOP having Portillistas causing trouble. No one is going to suggest that the GOP will regain power by ideological surrender.

As from learning from the UK, the Tories are now under threat from a resurgent Brown, the man who helped to get us into the brown stuff (sic) in the first place. The less attention the GOP plays to the UK the better.

Austin

Being a Catholic non-WASP but still a conservative Southerner; why couldn't Bobby Jindal build a winning electoral coalition in'12?

Paul

I hope Jindal never gets anywhere near The White House.
He and Palin seem made for each other. Both share the same obnoxious anti-abortion under any circumstances views.
For the Republican Party to become worthy of election again it must ditch the anti-choice dogma in which it has become so tied up.
It was with reluctance that I backed Obama but his belief that it is not the business of the state to decide what a woman does with her body, made him the only option.

Scott

If Palin is the "attractive" face of the Republican Party then God help America! Incoherent, vacuous and playing (all the time) on her sexual appeal. You should read some of the Rep blogs about 'stiffened my spine and more!!'

That Americans were comparing her to Margaret Thatcher is the greatest insult to that intelligent and courageous leader ever perpetrated.

Thatcher, Oxford degree, work as a research chemist, a thought-out political position and experience in parliament.

Palin, five colleges to get ONE degree in sports journalism. Short period as TV sports presenter. Failed beauty queen. Experience: read the Alaskan Anchorage Daily News or the Frontiersman for an accurate account of her total vacuity and totalitarian inclinations.

There are excellent conservative women in the Republican Party but McCain chose a self-promoting, moronic, 'vamp' to appeal to the lowest common denominator on which his party relies today.

David L Nilsson

This piece is typical of today's Spectator, with its One World, Zionist, globalist, essentially anti-conservative and anti-white agenda.

Tell the Republicans the only way they can win is by tolerating illegal immigration, groveling to the myth of Obama the Magic Mulatto, sucking up en Espanol to "Hispanics" (Mexican peons) who kick the GOP in the teeth time and again at elections, and dissing their natural supporters as rednecks enthused only by phallic symbolism.

In other words, let's have a nice bipartisan consensus in which the traditional white Christian character of the USA is relentlessly discarded... until the electorate has a permanent "choice" of Dems or Dems Lite, presiding over a Greater Brazil or Mexico with lots of cheap help for the Fortune 500 elite in their gated communities. Meanwhile the ordinary middle class taxpayer runs faster and faster on his hamster wheel to bail out the low-IQ, welfare-addicted majority.

The alternative to this new global-capitalist enslavement is the secession of white states, and fast.