People that don't know the difference will call anyone a “Populist”. Thatcher was no “Populist”. If you like a "Populist" that's your problem. I'm just pointing out what Sarah Palin is.
“But perhaps you don't understand these things. People are so terribly dumbed down. They know nothing of history. “
Why is it the people like yourself are so unoriginal? You quote me about people like yourself - “dumbed down” and proud of it. This house hold knows unrewritten history.
Am I quoting you about people like myself? Well, I shall atone for this offense by quoting someone who had something to say about people like you.
Margaret Thatcher once told Sir Anthony Parsons that she was proud she didn't belong to his class of "upper middle class British intellectuals who see everybody else's point of view and have none of their own."
Just yesterday I was reading the diary entry of one such upper class Tory intellectual, who recorded in 1977 a conversation he had with a fellow Tory who commiserated with him about Margaret Thatcher, who was the Tory leader of the Opposition at the time. They complained that she was making the Tories "an extreme right wing party." They impotently plotted how they could get rid of her, but were forced to admit that a change of leadership was impossible. His companion contemptuously asked, "Well, what are we going to do after she gets in [as Prime Minister] if she gets in?!" He replied, with equal condescension, "all we can do is to see she is surrounded by adequate advisors." He went on to write, "We both agreed that Margaret [is] an extremely nice person, but I said that I had never had much confidence in her judgement and my fears had been realised....Margaret is extremely good at walkabout and meeting the public, but [is] politically unaware."
Basically, that Tory toff just gave the same sort of contemptuous assessment of Margaret Thatcher that you gave of Palin. According to him, Thatcher was too "right wing" and not bright enough for the job. She was good at campaigning and working the rope lines and talking to ordinary people, but she was "politically unaware" and had questionable judgement.
You claim to be historically literate, so I hope that I do not offend your intelligence by pointing out that Margaret Thatcher eventually led her party to a record breaking three general election victories (hadn't been done since 1832), the first in 1979 was after she gave a successful motion of No Confidence (a rare occurrence that has happened only three times in the 20th century). She revolutionized Great Britain and is regarded as the greatest Prime Minister of the post-war era. She saved the UK from its descent into a socialist third world country. She was so successful as the leader of the Conservative Party that the old socialist Labour Party she so vehemently opposed is dead forever, and the new Labour Party of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown is regarded as Thaterchism-lite. Even her enemies co-opted her beliefs.
Not bad for "an extreme right wing" lady who was "politically unaware."
She won by promoting what was commonly referred to as "populist Thatcherite policies." She did, after all, coin the phrase "Popular Capitalism." She spoke of "my people" -- meaning the middle class, or "middle England" as they came to be known. At her core, she was always the grocer's daughter who grew up "over the shop" and earned a scholarship to study at university. She was a self-made woman and proud of it. On the day she became Prime Minister, she was asked to comment on her father who was her "political mentor." She said:
Well, of course, I just owe almost everything to my own father. I really do. He brought me up to believe all the things that I do believe and they're just the values on which I've fought the Election. And it's passionately interesting for me that the things that I learned in a small town, in a very modest home, are just the things that I believe have won the Election.
Now, please feel free to tell me how "stupid" and "extreme" and "populist" Governor Palin is. You amuse me.
GG, you gotta cut the RomneyBOTS some slack...LOL. They sometimes get all twisted up in their Palin attacks.
But, if you were reacting to a suggestion that Gov. Palin was not a conservative, and/or that conservatism and a populist movement are somehow conceptually incompatible- you really shouldn't have spent the time. You should have done what the Gipper would have done- chuckled and shook your head. -:)
Post 86- Magnificent!