07 June 2007

Cameron-Clinton Partnership?

HC-DCThe Spectator has a thought-provoking piece arguing that "a centrist Democrat such as Hillary Clinton has more in common with Cameron’s Tories than any Republican" and therefore The Tories should be backing Hillary. It notes:

Both have recently given major foreign policy speeches, and although they opt for different language (Cameron chooses ‘liberal conservatism’, Clinton ‘realistic idealism’) they offer the same principles, prioritised in the same order: first, a reassurance that they are prepared to use military force when appropriate; second, an absolute rejection of the neoconservative project; third, an emphasis on multilateralism in any future endeavours. Gordon Brown is too tied to Iraq to claim anything like the same degree of common ground.

Even in domestic policy, on a whole range of issues — women’s rights, the importance of the family, investing in state education, ending cronyism and the culture of spin in government — Hillary Clinton sounds remarkably like David Cameron. She is a free-marketeer, but one who recognises what Cameron calls ‘our moral obligation to the people and the places left behind by globalisation’.
So, who would like David Cameron to make the Spec's suggested announcement: "Due to the importance of maintaining the Special Relationship whichever parties are in power, the Conservative party will not pick sides or have partisan arrangements with any particular political party in the United States"?

1 comments:

WR said...

I don't know anything about David Cameron other than that he's against Grammer Schools, which I guess has a different meaning in the UK than the US, so over here we're confused on why he's against them.

Senator Hillary Clinton, however, I know. Even our most fawning newspapers would not have the chutzpah to claim she's a "Centrist Democrat." Bill might qualify as he became a centrist in order to stay relevant after the Dems lost control of Congress, but NOT Hillary.

She is now trying to pretend that she is more centrist than we all know her to be, but we also know her as a political chameleon. She becomes whatever she needs to be (including African American - laughable as it is, she was speaking in Ebonics to a group from the NAACP late last year!) to get the votes of the crowd she's in front of. I think she would become a Republican or a Tory if she thought it would get votes.

You need to understand some new "code words" in our media to understand what things mean in the US. When Hillary talks about "Women's Rights" she means keeping abortion on demand for any reason up to partial birth legal and government funded. When Hillary talks about "Family Values" she means supporting the rights of any group of people, regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation to "form" a family and to say otherwise to be punished as hate-speech.

That said, I agree that it would be best for Tories to decide not to endorse or debase any party or candidate in the USA. You don't hear any US leaders endorsing any UK candidates (mostly because we are too self-important to care). There were legendary Presidential / Prime Minister partnerships such as Franklin/Churchill and Reagan/Thatcher, but those are rare and based on personalities. To try to force it could be catastrophic (witness the unequal yolking of Bush/Blair).