TIMES ONLINE: The party once preached tolerance but is now getting ever whiter and straighter
I had the pleasure of accompanying Nick Herbert, the Tory shadow environment minister, on some of his tour of conservative and Republican circles in Washington last week. I felt bad for him in a way. Not only did he somehow break the bath plug in the British embassy, he was also in favour of action on climate change as a core Tory pledge.
The Republican party doesn’t really believe in baths (some super-charged showers do the trick) and it certainly doesn’t believe in that “snake-oil science”, as Sarah Palin recently called climate change. But the best was yet to come. Herbert came here to give a speech on why conservatism can and should be inclusive of gays and lesbians. The speech he gave was terrific, largely avoided domestic culture-war politics and focused on what he believed the Tories’ experience could teach their sister party in the US, today’s Republicans.
“I can tell you what happens to a party when it closes the door to sections of our society and is reduced to its core vote,” he told the wide-eyed audience at the libertarian Cato Institute. “It’s no fun being in opposition for 13 years. And I can tell you what happens when a party opens its doors again and broadens its appeal. A successful political party should be open to all and ought to look something like the country it seeks to govern.”
The same week, the most popular conservative activist conference — attended by Mitt Romney and Dick Cheney, among many others — was full of rousing speeches. It is a kind of informal party conference for the grassroots, and takes place early each year in DC. It was, shall we say, an interesting contrast with Herbert’s message. >>> Andrew Sullivan* | Sunday, February 21, 2010
* Andrew Sullivan is an author, academic and journalist. He holds a PhD from Harvard in political science, and is a former editor of The New Republic. His 1995 book, Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality, became one of the best-selling books on gay rights. He has been a regular columnist for The Sunday Times since the 1990s, and also writes for Time and other publications.
