THE SUNDAY TIMES: The Republican party has lurched so far right that it can no longer recognise mainstream conservatism
When I read the usual antiTory screeds in the British press and the dark admonitions that they might harbour some crypto-Thatcherite agenda beneath the air-brushed facade [sic], I feel as if I’m living on some other planet. From the vantage point of the current American right, the Cameron Tories are a bunch of pinkos.
David Cameron has insisted on his credentials as a green. Since the last US presidential election, when Senator John McCain ran as someone who took climate change seriously, the Republican party consensus has been that it is a total hoax and anyone who gives credence to it is a loony leftie.
Cameron is trying to reassure middle England that the NHS is safe with the Tories. But the Republican base is in uproar over President Barack Obama’s rather modest attempt to subsidise the working poor’s access to private insurance.
Since Obama’s election, Sarah Palin has gone from being a fringe member of the right to the centre of the Republican base. McCain has been forced to ask her to campaign for him in a primary battle against JD Hayworth, a much more doctrinaire rightwinger.
If the British right is somewhat crucified in its attempt to balance right and centre, the American right is simply choosing between far right and totally insane far right. And every time you think someone in the establishment will try to tamp down “Tea Party” excess, you realise there is no Republican establishment any more. It is a party run by its base and its base is run by the most radical members of the chat radio and Fox News media machine. >>> Andrew Sullivan | Sunday, April 11, 2010
