I think we can state, with some confidence, that Mrs. Palin isn’t terribly well informed. More worryingly, for me at least, is that she turned down a briefing prior to the Couric interview – apparently the team had pretty much guessed the questions.

That shows piss-poor judgement and misplaced confidence.

As for Tim Montgomerie, he’s a neocon true-believer. He also seems to have a talent for wasting other people’s money. His latest venture, America in the World (no, I’m not linking to it), seems particularly misjudged considering everyone’s suddenly happy to give loving America a second chance.

He’s an apologist for a failed politics.

Also, what did Montgomerie hope to achieve with his recent Telegraph article arguing for a McCain presidency on foreign policy grounds?

The Iraq war was badly mishandled, but the surge of troops has brought significant progress. ~ Tim Montgomerie

No it hasn’t. It may have quelled some of the violence (which would be better attributed to the ‘Sunni Awakening’), but it absolutely has not been a strategic success – as the point of the surge was to give the parliament breathing room to progress, which it hasn’t.

So which side will win the battle for the soul of the republican party – the centrists or the right-wingers?
And will they alienate/marginalise the other side sufficiently in the course of doing so that they break away to form a realistic third force in US politics?

I don’t care about the former, but I hope so in the latter.

Well, I’m quite happy for the right to blame it on McCain, the economy, or the ‘liberal media’.

If that’s what it takes for them to continue with a bust strategy.

Some of the claptrap being spun this week shows they’ve learnt nothing. Good. Suck it up shitbags.

This new rapprochement with the US is exceedingly odd from a political constituency who habitually side with every enemy it has , deplore its individualist free enterprise culture and find its enlightened taxation system a source of horror( Can we reduce the taxes of 95 % of the population here …pleeeze) . This same constituency are always trying to push us into fetid Europe and away from the US and if any of them stood for election in the land of free would be a cause for hilarity.
What would the Americans make of an old socialist like Brown or a Liberal party that spent most of the 90s and noughties criticising a party that has increased government spending by 55% from the left ? Not much
The British Conservative Party has felt increasingly uncomfortable with the fundamentalist religiosity of the Republicans if equally with the displaced secular religiosity of the that nauseating wind bag Obamah and co.. Nonetheless it is the only British party that consistently stands against the infection of socialism and authoritarian big government and for individual freedom . It does so against the serried ranks of swivel eyed collectivists from whose jealous hatred it often defends the US here .
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Ich bin ein American

The Republicans ran a poor campaign and in many ways deserved to lose. But Palin is a tremendous asset, if used properly and not divisively. She will appeal to independents if she can build her experience. The next four years are crucial for Republicans to regroup and rebuild.

By the way, I wouldn’t characterise Obama’s victory as a straightforward ‘victory for the left’. Inter alia, he ran on a tax-cutting platform, claims to be fiscally conservative, opposes gay marriage and supports the death penalty. A recent poll indicated that more Americans see themselves as conservative rather than liberal (I think it was 34 per cent vs 22 per cent).

Newmania,

I suspect that the vast majority people in the US would not like the kind of left of centre government most us at LC would support at all, just as George Bush would never get elected in the UK. But that’s ok, the US and the UK have different political traditions and we respect that, and are happy to support Obama even though, by UK standards, he would not be described as left wing. And I suspect that most of us here would like the UK to have close ties with both Europe AND the US.

Newmainia – Actually, I think what most of us lefties deplore about America is the sheer depravity of it’s poorest citizens living conditions; the excessive levels of gun crime; the bloated private healthcare system that manages to cost a fortune while simultaneously not actually covering a huge chunk of the population and trying it’s level best to avoid paying out to the people it actually does cover; the foreign policy justified on the basis of misleading propoganda and the religous right whose obsession with moral values seems to magically exlude such ideas as loving your neigbour and tackling poverty.

Individualist free enterprise is great where it happens and from what I know of the US tax system it’s actually not all that bad provided you ignore some of the more recent Republican tax cuts.

There’s no point even responding to Newmania – he’s an annoying and abusive troll.

Aaron – spot on.

“And will they alienate/marginalise the other side sufficiently in the course of doing so that they break away to form a realistic third force in US politics?”

I don’t see how the religious right can form itself into a realistic third force. It seems to me to be a slap-dash adjunct to the traditional GOP agenda (almost perfectly symbolised by Palin’s addition to McCain’s ticket), an easy way to raise funds and mobilise people but not a realistic political force because its appeal is too narrow in of itself.

On a different track, as far as I can see, out of Reagan, Bush and Bush jnr. (the 3 men who have taken full electoral advantage of this political force), only the last one has seriously followed through on the neo-conservative foreign policy agenda that goes hand in hand with this force; Reagan was willing to negotiate with the Soviets and Bush didn’t ‘finish the job’ in the first Iraq war when he easily could have. Can the Republicans continue to offer the American electorate at large personally weak presidential candidates who, by their weakness, are actually able to reconcile this agenda/have it reconciled for them?

McCain could well have been president-elect right now if he had had the conviction to face up to these irrational and frankly politically extreme (I mean that in the narrowest sense) and elements and propose a more traditional/softer Republican agenda before and during his campaign; this would have appealed far more to independents and right-wing dems. He has had 8 years to plan this campaign and to better assess the pros and cons of Bush’s agenda; he should be thoroughly ashamed of himself. Palin was an insane choice and anyone with half a brain could see that from the moment she joined the ticket. McCain should never have placed himself in a position where such a choice was even a realistic possibility.

Simply put, he should have possessed the courage and identified the advantage in saying, ‘enough is enough’.

There is a danger [for the independent liberal/left] in the Obama victory and it’s this: the feeling of jubliation will soften our views of Labour, the by election win will distract from the mess they’ve made in government, the new US adminstration may allow Brown to articulate a more lefty sounding friendly foreign policy which in turn my seduce Labour party wannabees and their followers into the party with little critical thought.

The whole Sarah Palin thing is very odd. The American and British Right wing have gone completely insane over this doofus. I did not think the GOP could come up with anyone more stupid than G W Bush, And then I was introduced to Mrs Palin.

I know they don’t believe in evolution, but they seem to have employed a reverse Evolution in the selection of their candidates. After Bush and then Palin, 20 years from now they might put forward a household appliance, like a hoover if the current trend to change. The party of Lincoln reduced to this idiocy. Amazing.

I hope people like Bruce Anderson and Dominick Lawson will apologise for their idiocy in backing this woman. Why The Independent gives column inches to this bullshit is unbelievable. The Question Time from the Tory Party conference is a piece of comedy gold, and if you want a good laugh I recommend you watch it.