Will Britain's Cameron provide a model for Republican victory in the 2012 US elections?

There is a good case to be made for it:

UK's Responsible Economic Approach

WASHINGTON -- The chilliness is understandable. When David Cameron, Britain's new conservative prime minister, met with Barack Obama this week, the president was also encountering his worst political nightmare. If Cameron succeeds, he will do more than save his ancient island from the economic fate of Greece -- he will provide a model for Republican victory in the 2012 U.S. presidential election.

[...]

But Cameron's austerity has the virtue of economic responsibility. It is easy to close a budget deficit with massive new taxes -- but it is also massively destructive to economic growth. So Cameron has proposed about 4 pounds in spending reductions for every pound in tax increases. A recent study of 44 major fiscal adjustments in developed nations since 1975 found that a one-percentage-point increase in taxes as a portion of GDP cuts annual economic growth by an average of 0.9 percentage points. Reducing government expenditures by one percentage point, in contrast, increases average annual growth by 0.6 percentage points.

If Cameron's approach works -- dramatically cutting deficits without stalling economic growth -- it will be an obvious, powerful example for America and other nations.

But Cameron's progress offers two other lessons that some Republicans may be less willing to acknowledge. [...]

Read the whole thing. When I first read about Cameron's "Big Society", I was quite cynical about it. But now that I see more of what he's trying to achieve, it seems rather brilliant (given what he has to work with). And what it said about "Some type of center-right alliance of fiscally conservative Democrats and Republicans" ... well, read the whole thing. There may indeed, be some lessons there for Republicans.

The Republican's main strategy right now seems to be, that they aren't Obama and the Democrats. But that's not good enough. Remember in the 2004 elections, when the Democrats kept saying, "ANYONE but Bush", to justify their choice of John Kerry, and their anti-Republican platform? They were simply against the Republicans, more than they were for anything. That wasn't a good enough strategy then, and it's STILL not good enough for the Republican side to be using now. If winning matters. And it had better. If we continue losing, we may lose the farm.
     

Britain's Con-Dems and the Islamists

The UK and Islamist Terror: Conservatives Putting the Nation at Risk?

[...] The Conservative-led coalition government faces serious challenges, perhaps most especially in regard to Islamist extremism, which it seems intellectually ill-equipped to combat.

Pundits suggest that the coalition ("Con-Dem") government will collapse, possibly within a year or two, and that the Labour party might even be swept back into office. With the Conservatives having abandoned their defining values, and having aligned themselves with the left-wing Liberal Democrats, another threat comes from the right, both from within and from without the party.

Three days before the election, the Conservatives issued their A Contract for Equalities - arguably their real manifesto – articulating how the party would make anti-discrimination "central" to a Conservative government. The problem is not that the Conservatives want people to be judged by their character rather than by the skin color, etc. That is entirely right and proper – as virtually everyone in Britain recognizes.

The problem is that this sort of "anti-discrimination" is ideological: those who openly reject cultural relativism, believe in Britishness, democracy, etc., constitute an oppressor class, that has, and that is, dominating various oppressed classes. This is not an ideology in which Whites are regarded as the exclusive oppressors of non-Whites, but, rather, one in which the West oppresses the non-Western. The Sikh that champions democracy and inveighs against radical Islam is also certain to be deemed a "racist" and lumped in with neo-Nazis.

Cameron believes that people become Islamists – and, perhaps eventually commit acts of terror – not because they are attracted to, and eventually believe in, Islamist ideology per se, but because they have been oppressed. Islamist ideology is not a factor, as attraction to it must be preceded by discrimination. The nation is to blame.

This was perfectly clear from his statements and actions in the lead-up to the election.

By pushing female, gay, ethnic and religious minorities into safe seats, and thus into government, Cameron asserted, other members of these groups would realize that they were equal citizens in Britain, with equal rights and opportunities. By merely seeing more "minority" MPs, the rifts in society would magically repair themselves.

According to the party's pre-election statement on national security, "Government cannot provide security without the trust and support of its citizens." In other words, if Muslims do not trust or support the government, then they might drift into extremism. The Conservatives thus promised to "review and consolidate […] counter-terrorism and security laws introduced by Labour," and especially to review the "Prevent" scheme, "supposed to stop vulnerable people from becoming terrorists but which has been accused of spying on innocent Muslims." (Prevent was set up by the previous government, specifically to combat the growth of Islamist extremism and terrorism, by working with Imams, and so on.)

Cameron shares his "anti-discrimination" worldview with coalition partners, the uncompromisingly left-wing, LibDems. Of greater consequence, though, it has also now become the defining ideology of most of those at the top of the "progressive" Conservative party. [...]

The full article gives examples of what the dangers are, and where this appears to be going.

Regardless of what anyone may think of "identity politics", one can argue that this strategy of the Brits has had some success in politically co-opting and placating some groups that might otherwise be more hostile. It may even work with some Muslims. But with the hard-core Islamists, who actually implement terrorist attacks? Will they not just see it as more appeasement and weakness, and cause them to attack even more furiously and intently? That's what the author of the article seems to think. That Cameron and the Con-Dems are putting themselves and the country in harms way. In any case, regardless of what any of us thinks, we shall see what happens.


Meanwhile, we have a similar dynamic at work in our own government:

The Alien in the White House
The author goes on about the President in particular, but also about people in his administration and their views, which on matters of terrorism, are similar to Great Britain's government:

[...] And who can forget the exhortations on jihad by John Brennan, Mr. Obama's chief adviser on counterterrorism? Mr. Brennan has in the past charged that Americans lack sensitivity to the Muslim world, and that we have particularly failed to credit its peace-loving disposition. In a May 26 speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Mr. Brennan held forth fervently, if not quite comprehensibly, on who our enemy was not: "Our enemy is not terrorism because terrorism is just a tactic. Our enemy is not terror because terror is a state of mind, and as Americans we refuse to live in fear."

He went on to announce, sternly, that we do not refer to our enemies as Islamists or jihadists because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam. How then might we be permitted to describe our enemies? One hint comes from another of Mr. Brennan's pronouncements in that speech: That "violent extremists are victims of political, economic and social forces."

Yes, that would work. Consider the news bulletins we could have read: "Police have arrested Faisal Shahzad, victim of political, economic and social forces living in Connecticut, for efforts to set off a car bomb explosion in Times Square." Plotters in Afghanistan and Yemen, preparing for their next attempt at mass murder in America, could only have listened in wonderment. They must have marvelled in particular on learning that this was the chief counterterrorism adviser to the president of the United States. [...]

Can you say "Dhimmitude"? You can be sure that Muslim extremists can.