David Cameron chosen as new Tory leader

David Cameron has been elected as the new Conservative leader by a margin of more than two to one over David Davis.

The 39-year-old beat Mr Davis by 134,446 votes to 64,398 in a postal ballot of Tory members across the UK.

The Old Etonian, an MP for only four years, said Tories had to offer "modern compassionate Conservatism" and "stop grumbling about today's Britain".

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The new leader said there was "something in the air" which meant voters were prepared to look at the Conservatives again.

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4502652.stm

but only because the Labour Party has failed to stand for anything even remotely resembling a progressive platform. It's the same quandry we face here, only amplified several times. You have the ostensibly left-wing parrty acquiescing to participation in an imperialistic, reactionary war -- so why not vote for the Tories?

Imagine the upside-down world Britons live in right now. What if Democrats had started the Iraq War? Where would we go? What would we do?

toppled Lyndon Johnson in the primaries.

It's time for Tony to go!

LBJ didn't lose in the primaries, he backed out of them. And then RFK got shot. And then that well-meaning douchebag Humphrey got the nomination, and got eaten alive by Nixon.

Sometimes, it doesn't pay to have morals.

lost if he hadn't backed out of the race. And a loss in Wisconsin would have been a devastating blow to his prestige and his candidacy.

If Humphrey had had the moral courage to differ with Johnson on the war, he probably would have won. He almost did anyway.

:evilgrin:

I agree that we were right to move away from the old conservative southern wing, but we have paid a price for it and we haven't be as effective as we should be as a party.

party.

The old Dixiecrats left us and became Southern Republicans (which I like to call "Dixiecrats Without Sheets")and helped move the Republican party further to the right. I think it is fair to say that Abe Lincoln has been replaced by Strom Thurmond as spiritual leader of the Republican Party.

The new Southern Democrats are now the progressives and liberals (who in days past were Republicans -- "Black Republicans" as the Dixiecrats derisively called them) and African-Americans enfranchised by the civil rights laws of the 1960s.

The Democratic Party until Harry Truman had not embraced ANY civil rights legislation of consequence and didn't really get the ball rolling until the 1950s and 1960s. When the Democrats did that, the Southern portion of the party left in total revolt and the more conservative elements of the Republican Party were more than willing to take them in and support states rights. While of course it was disgusting that they did this, it is nonetheless true.

It was a coalition of the Northern Democrats and Republicans who pushed the legislation through.

My point is that it was the Democrats embracing civil rights that pushed Southern Democrats out of the party. Republicans not long after decided to embrace the conservative end of the civil rights debate, arguing for limits on busing and affirmative action and thus captured the southern vote that had left due to the Democrats embracing civil rights.

But chances are they were old Tory party voters who switched to Labour in 1997.

There are a significant number of us who would rather stab ourselves repeatedly in the genitals rather than vote Tory or even allow them back into power again.

They were kicked out by a landslide in 1997 and I think it's fair to say that people will not be voting Tory because they want a "progressive platform". It's more a question of the Tories gaining all the voters they lost to Labour in 1997 becuase Tony Blair wasn't as scary as your average socialist.

Just saying that independent -- not necessarily progressive -- British voters may vote Tory over Labour in the coming elections, simply over the war issue, with no regard to domestic policy. That may or may not be true -- just pointing out some stuff I've read.

But, for the record, I'm not so dense that I don't know which party is the more conservative of the two major British parties. :hi:

Even more of them voted for it than Democrats in the USA. Their best excuse is "we were fed duff information", but they're not trying to use it that much.

:puke:

(having said that, I know nothing of the bloke)

"Enough of this love-in: Bush was a compassionate conservative too

David Cameron's record - and his neocon friends - reveal a man of the committed right beneath the glossy, liberal veneer

<<snip>>

Cameron is no chum of Bush - and the president is unlikely to alienate Blair by getting too cosy with him now - but the parallel is not entirely bogus. For one thing, Cameron too is surrounded by ideological neoconservatives, his campaign manager and shadow chancellor George Osborne chief among them. Cameron strongly backed the Iraq war while his allies, Michael Gove and Ed Vaizey, last month founded the Henry Jackson Society, named after the late US senator who is the patron saint of neoconservatism."

<<snip>>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1660457,00.html