Quote Originally Posted by Furunculus View Post
republicans get a hard on for Cameron:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/news...he-States.html
The article doesn't really seem to canvas serious commentary from the Republican party leadership. It's very wishful thinking, mainly aimed at British Conservatives.

David Cameron is somewhat left of President Obama on most policies. Whilst the GOP might need to appeal more to the centre ground, one hopes that they won't adopt the vacuous pseudo-socialism of the UK Tories under Cameron.

Cameron and Osborne are, much like Brown and his cronies, merely flirting with the idea of fiscal constraint. No-one is finding the courage to talk about real, long-term fiscal responsibility in the light of the massive public debt that has been rung up. There is some light in the area of reducing the state's erosion of individual liberties but since David Davies has been cast into the darkness, and the rhetoric is very flimsy, one cannot believe that once in power, the Tories won't follow the same route as Labour.

Social conservatives in the GOP would be horrified at Cameron's "conservatism". Personally, I think the Republicans would benefit from laying off the hard-line social controls they have boxed themselves into, but I'm not American and have never really understood the paradox between the States' libertarian soul and the desire for the state to force fellow citizens into one brand of Christian morals.

I believe that many of the Western democracies would embrace parties that guarantee hard-line fiscal conservatism alongside more libertarian principles. Governments that really design smaller government, not just fire a few civil servants. Get out of the business of legislating morals (with the costs that incurs). Jeffersonian democracy, if you like.

But that also means getting shot of expensive foreign military ventures and reducing the power of corporations to influence public spending - and in so doing, removing the taxpayer "guarantee" for those corporations currently deemed "too big to fail".

I have yet to see a really "conservative" platform. It would be good to see the GOP taking this line. To do so however effectively, I suspect they might need to address the rampant anti-intellectualism that is another baffling aspect of the US political scene.