- quoted from a workplace discussion
I answered:
This is probably much more likely, as GW grasps for "an axis of his own" (as the Economist put it), but it is useful only in the US political context, where Thatcher is still treated with reverence as a "great statesperson" - as is Reagan. In Britain though, Thatcher is regarded askance, as a somewhat loony, idiosyncratic and dogmatic misleader of her party into a semi-irrelevance that is the closest thing to a political sect to be found in the mainstream.
So far, the "Axis of Good" is comprised of the Republican Far Right - Sharon - Thatcher. Which shows how far skewed to the right is the Anglo-American political mainstream, with this far right axis in the drivers' seat, apparently, meeting only a few plaintive murmurs from the opposition.
We shall see how long they remain in that seat. Recall that this same far right was dislodged by a late 1980s' political realignment within mainstream politics, reacting negatively to the massive dislocations and distortions of their economic policies. It remains to be seen if economic considerations will have the same effect - it could have the opposite effect this time around.
The complexities of the late '80's realignment (my shorthand is 'ruling class realignment', to indicate that little or no mass intervention was involved in precipitating the shift - compare to recent events in Argentina) can't be gotten into here, but one aspect is worth mentioning: the accommodating rightward shift of the British Labour Party and the U.S. Democratic Party that so eased the process of realignment which put an end to the counter-"bolshevik" phase of Reaganism-Thatcherism, by creating a political space for certain more conservative political elites to "moderate" to - a new political center considerably to the right of the old one of the postwar.
Question is, how much _further_ a shift to the right can New Labour and New Democrats accommodate? Here an important difference between the two countries emerges. The rightward movement of the two parties was historically well coordinated - they pursued what Maoists would call the same "line of march", more or less - but they began and ended their march in different political places. Labour went from a working class party of reform to a born again Liberal party; the Democrats went from being a liberal-LED (not liberal, the U.S. "parties" are more political blocs than parties) organization to one led by a particular breed of (New Republic Mag) type of neo-conservative. New Labour, however, is rather comfortably centered around the broad British liberal political it currently occupies, heir to the longest, oldest and deepest liberal tradition on earth. One sees little sign of a strong Labour Right prepared for yet another accommodating lurch. Especially as there is not much to accommodate with to the right - except that Right across the Pond. On the contrary, the tension presently comes from the Left within Britain, that is where Blair has to do his dancing these days to maintain stability.
The U.S. Democratic party, never a working class party - indeed a party whose whole history and existence has been dedicated to the blockage of any political realignment around class - is another story. Its leadership is presently skewed considerably to the right of its ostensive "mass constituency", and right now - if Joe Lieberman is any indication - the Democratic Party Right has the political initiative. This result, due to the different organizational structure of the Democrats relative to that of Labour, the product of different histories, indicates that there _is_ room for further rightward accommodation here. If so, and if, say, Lieberman becomes the Presidential nominee, the Democrats would have nominated their most right wing candidate since, quite literally, before the Civil War (Al Smith lurched rightward, in the 1930's, _after_ having run against Hoover in 1928. So did Hearst). If Clinton was Grover Cleveland (a 'Gold Democrat' politician generally to the right of the old Republican Party mainstream in the 1880s' - things were different then), then Lieberman is somewhere between James Polk and Buchanan. No not Pat, but the President before Lincoln :-)
What tensions that might provoke within the Democratic Party remains to be seen.
-Brad