Tea party

Cameron the ‘Tea Party Tory’

David Cameron’s cuts agenda is winning him some unusual praise from the American hard Right — from the sort of people the British political class considers beyond the pale. For instance, Pat Buchanan, the former presidential candidate and hardliner extraordinaire, is so impressed by Britain’s austerity measures that he has affectionately labelled Cameron the ‘Tea Party Tory’. He writes, ‘Casting aside the guidance of Lord Keynes — government-induced deficits are the right remedy for recessions — Cameron has bet his own and his party’s future on the new austerity. He is making Maggie Thatcher look like Tip O’Neill.’ I wonder how Steve Hilton would feel about this particular bit of

Obama 2.0

The piece in the New York Times magazine this weekend on the Obama presidency illustrates how far he has fallen. A large chunk of it is devoted to whether or not he can win re-election, something that most of his supporters used to take for granted.  Significantly, the Obama White House itself is admitting that things could have been done better: “While proud of his record, Obama has already begun thinking about what went wrong — and what he needs to do to change course for the next two years. He has spent what one aide called “a lot of time talking about Obama 2.0” with his new interim chief

There’s No British Tea Party: Here’s Why

More on Christine O’Donnell’s stunning victory in the Delaware GOP Senate primary in due course but it’s worth pointing out that such a triumph almost certainly could not happen in Britain. Not even in our new primary-friendly Tory party. Because most of the contests called primaries in Britain are really forms of caucus, not proper primaries and even the so-called “open primaries” that have been held by postal ballot are actually only semi-open. In each case voters are offered a choice of candidates who have been approved by Tory HQ. It is not, in other words a truly open process and consequently it’s exceedingly difficult for a grass-roots rebellion to