The New Republic

This evening at The Daily Palin, Andrew asseverates that David Cameron is speaking commonsensically "on the West's interests vis-a-vis the Muslim world ...." That is to say, Cameron has picked up Andrewspeak. There is not a lot of common sense in a person who refuses to recognize that there is virtually no Palestinian constituency for peace. He lionizes Oakeshott but writes like Rousseau.

- liberal reformer

July 28, 2010 at 8:34pm

Sorry LibRef, you have that backwards. Andrew says Cameron is speaking commonsensically "on the west's interests vis a vis the Muslim world" because Sullivan's been in Cameron (and the Tories) bed for ages. You only had to read him through the General Election to figure out how fawning and one sided (even on gay rights issues) his love d' Cameron is. Cameron's a foreign policy pygmy; unlike Blair and Brown he's shown no great interest in foreign affairs political or economic (his sole major FP result as Tory Leader was to take his European MPs out of the regular conservative coalition and into crazy town). While he's not alone among so-called US "principled conservatives" in trying to build him up as the future of Conservativism, (Brooks did it a few months after Brown took office), despite his general lack of real policy or policy chops, his amorphous "Big Society," his zig zag between being "Me Too" for New Labour and Mr. Austerity, and his inability to when a Parliamentary majority in an easy General Election. But people "saddened" by the Tea Party lust for him to be Thatcher to some future Reagan, when he's really just someone who'll be lucky to get elected at all next time.

- Crock1701

July 28, 2010 at 10:18pm

I have what backwards? I am sorry but I am at a loss to decipher your post. The Tories are certainly far advanced over the GOP when it comes to gay issues. And Tony Blair is a foreign policy titan? Would this be the Blair who became George W. Bush's poodle during the Iraq War and then got stiffed by Bush on postwar contracts for Britain? Perhaps Britain could do with a little less foreign policy greatness, if that is the case

- liberal reformer

July 29, 2010 at 1:07pm

You have the causation backwards, it's not Cameron's Middle East views = Andrew's => Andrew <3 Cameron, it's Andrew <3 Cameron => Cameron's views are amazing. And Cameron is far advanced compared to the GOP on Gay issues, but so is the UK. Cameron's shadow Home Sec on the eve of the Election favored letting hotels discriminate against gays, and he's lined up his European MPS with Eastern European homophobes. As for Blair and Foreign Policy, despite the "poodle" jibes it was always clear that Blair had a passion for foreign affairs. Witness his criticism of the Major government for its dithering during the Bosnia Massacres, his Chicago speech and active role in building the coalition for the Kosovo intervention that ultimately deposed Milosevic, his strong intervention through the UN that ended the Sierra Leone Civil War, and his armtwisting as President of the EU and G8 on Global Poverty in 2005. Beyond Iraq, Blair was clearly engaged and interested in Foreign Policy. Brown was interested in International Economic Policy, working with Blair at Gleneagles and as PM worked on things like pioneering the bank rescue in 2008 and things like international financial regulation. Cameron's never shown any interest in Foreign Policy, instead talking up domestic affairs, austerity, "big society" etc. It's not too surprising, as he has to thread the needle between isolationist out of Europe Tories and a public weary of Atlanticism. Nevertheless, Cameron's not a foreign policy man.

- Crock1701

July 29, 2010 at 3:00pm