Ali
12-27-2004, 09:25 AM
Fraser Nelson in Scotland on Sunday
SIX WEEKS since President George W Bush’s presidential victory, and all is quiet in Washington. A Jewish Hanukah candle recently joined a Christmas tree outside the White House: this appears to be the sum total of action.
But inside, the adrenaline is still pumping from last month’s election. Karl Rove, its cherubic campaign mastermind, is still regaling aides with victory statistics: such turnout, such a majority, he says, means a mandate for action.
After revolutionising America’s foreign policy, the Bush administration now intends to give domestic policy the same overhaul. They have a mission: radical welfare state reform. And they have a name for it: Thatcherism.
Ever since being returned with a 3.5 million-vote majority, Bush’s aides have been deciding how best to use the momentum. A president with more votes than any other in history has a duty to use such authority in a second term. There is also a feeling of discovery. The victory was on a record turnout: the American public is far more conservative than even Rove’s figures projected. After defeating liberalism, he needs a creed to bury it.
After a long ideological search, Rove has chosen Britain in the 1980s. Then Margaret Thatcher took on a left-wing consensus, and embarked on an epoch-defining war which the President now aspires to wage in the US.
Scotland on Sunday attended a rare White House briefing on this agenda, rich in language Bush is unlikely to repeat to Tony Blair. The White House’s stated mission is "to make this young century a conservative century" by example. Aides from the Thatcher government are being courted by Bush speechwriters. Rove, himself, has been pouring over her speeches and has distilled Thatcherism in a new label: ‘ownership society’.
To Bush, this is the theme for a huge project: privatising the welfare state which Franklin D Roosevelt designed in the Depression of the 1930s.
While neoconservatives like Irving Kristol have moaned that welfare is "the best of intentions with the worst of results", such thoughts are whispered like a dirty secret. No more. Bush intends to smash the consensus. This is where Baroness Thatcher comes in. As explained in the seminar by a senior policy adviser to Bush, the Iron Lady is the ideological inspiration behind the revolution they intend to unleash.
"The closest analogy to what President Bush is attempting to do with his emphasis on an ‘ownership society’ may be found in the policies of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher," he said. What she did with 1.8m council houses in Britain, Mr Bush intends to do with welfare in America - privatise, let people make their own choice, let them enrich themselves and instil the policies of thrift and independence.
The aide, who was speaking on terms that he is not identified, surprised the many Brits in his audience by explaining the President’s philosophy in relation to a 1993 British book, The Anatomy of Thatcherism.
Written by Shirley Letwin - the late mother of Oliver Letwin, Shadow Chancellor, - he hailed it a "remarkable" work which contains the mission for a second Bush term. The extracts he read out are worth reprinting in full: "The Thatcherite argues that being one’s own master - in the sense of owning one’s own home or disposing of one’s own property - provides an incentive to think differently about the world. A Thatcherite, whilst not believing that patterns of ownership absolutely determine people's moral attitudes, nevertheless stresses that the two are connected, and sees in wider individual ownership a useful means of promoting the moral attitudes that Thatcherism seeks to cultivate."
These words have been read out more than once in the White House - at the very highest levels. President Bush wishes to finish in America what Baroness Thatcher started in Britain.
This article: here (http://news.scotsman.com/politics.cfm?id=1448142004 )
Um, somebody should tell Rove that Thatcher's policies are what created the ungodly beast which is the NHS, British Rail and the Benefits Agency, amongst other evil entities and eventually killed the Conservative Party in the UK
on second thoughts... HOLD THE MAYO!
SIX WEEKS since President George W Bush’s presidential victory, and all is quiet in Washington. A Jewish Hanukah candle recently joined a Christmas tree outside the White House: this appears to be the sum total of action.
But inside, the adrenaline is still pumping from last month’s election. Karl Rove, its cherubic campaign mastermind, is still regaling aides with victory statistics: such turnout, such a majority, he says, means a mandate for action.
After revolutionising America’s foreign policy, the Bush administration now intends to give domestic policy the same overhaul. They have a mission: radical welfare state reform. And they have a name for it: Thatcherism.
Ever since being returned with a 3.5 million-vote majority, Bush’s aides have been deciding how best to use the momentum. A president with more votes than any other in history has a duty to use such authority in a second term. There is also a feeling of discovery. The victory was on a record turnout: the American public is far more conservative than even Rove’s figures projected. After defeating liberalism, he needs a creed to bury it.
After a long ideological search, Rove has chosen Britain in the 1980s. Then Margaret Thatcher took on a left-wing consensus, and embarked on an epoch-defining war which the President now aspires to wage in the US.
Scotland on Sunday attended a rare White House briefing on this agenda, rich in language Bush is unlikely to repeat to Tony Blair. The White House’s stated mission is "to make this young century a conservative century" by example. Aides from the Thatcher government are being courted by Bush speechwriters. Rove, himself, has been pouring over her speeches and has distilled Thatcherism in a new label: ‘ownership society’.
To Bush, this is the theme for a huge project: privatising the welfare state which Franklin D Roosevelt designed in the Depression of the 1930s.
While neoconservatives like Irving Kristol have moaned that welfare is "the best of intentions with the worst of results", such thoughts are whispered like a dirty secret. No more. Bush intends to smash the consensus. This is where Baroness Thatcher comes in. As explained in the seminar by a senior policy adviser to Bush, the Iron Lady is the ideological inspiration behind the revolution they intend to unleash.
"The closest analogy to what President Bush is attempting to do with his emphasis on an ‘ownership society’ may be found in the policies of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher," he said. What she did with 1.8m council houses in Britain, Mr Bush intends to do with welfare in America - privatise, let people make their own choice, let them enrich themselves and instil the policies of thrift and independence.
The aide, who was speaking on terms that he is not identified, surprised the many Brits in his audience by explaining the President’s philosophy in relation to a 1993 British book, The Anatomy of Thatcherism.
Written by Shirley Letwin - the late mother of Oliver Letwin, Shadow Chancellor, - he hailed it a "remarkable" work which contains the mission for a second Bush term. The extracts he read out are worth reprinting in full: "The Thatcherite argues that being one’s own master - in the sense of owning one’s own home or disposing of one’s own property - provides an incentive to think differently about the world. A Thatcherite, whilst not believing that patterns of ownership absolutely determine people's moral attitudes, nevertheless stresses that the two are connected, and sees in wider individual ownership a useful means of promoting the moral attitudes that Thatcherism seeks to cultivate."
These words have been read out more than once in the White House - at the very highest levels. President Bush wishes to finish in America what Baroness Thatcher started in Britain.
This article: here (http://news.scotsman.com/politics.cfm?id=1448142004 )
Um, somebody should tell Rove that Thatcher's policies are what created the ungodly beast which is the NHS, British Rail and the Benefits Agency, amongst other evil entities and eventually killed the Conservative Party in the UK
on second thoughts... HOLD THE MAYO!