May 13^th

That old reliable Cal Thomas has a column in today’s paper. Cal is chortling over the unexpected conservative win in the British elections. He has to be very careful here because Prime Minister Cameron, while a Conservative in Britain would hardly pass as a conservative in this country. Thomas admits that Cameron supports same sex marriage and “climate change.”  Thomas felt the need to put climate change in quotes perhaps because he saw it as a naughty word. He semi-excuses Cameron for these lapses by commenting that, “Not all conservatives fit a single mold.” Indeed not all conservatives are conservative by Thomas’ standards any more than all Christians are Christians by anyone’s standards. (The Christian Identity Movement is a bank robbing terrorist movement which believes that only white people have souls. For them any melanin is a no, no.)

Cameron won by promising a program that would have made any current Republican candidate faint dead away: three million apprenticeships, (Equivalent to 15 million apprenticeships here, given our five times UK’s population.) Unemployment benefits in this conservatively governed country do not have a fixed end point as they do here where they vary state by state. Then there is maternal leave in conservatively governed Great Britain: we join Swaziland, Lesotho, and Papua New Guinea as the only major countries with no mandated paid maternal leave. Then Thomas suggests that devolution, which Cameron promises to institute to quiet the secessionists in Scotland and Wales, was, “A practice conservatives here would like to see implemented between Washington and the states.” Say what, Cal? We have a constitution Britain does not. Devolution is impossible here. And keep in mind that anything the British government grants by devolution they can just as easily take back!

If the Conservatives in Britain had pushed there for the issues the Republicans here hold as non-negotiable, they would be out of power indefinitely. Cameron took language straight from Labor’s playbook when he claimed to be supporting “working people.” The Brits might believe that language coming from one of their Conservatives; Americans would never believe it if it came from a Republican and there is a very good reason for that, do you remember Romney’s 47 percent?

Do you suppose any British politician could possibly be taken seriously about anything if he claimed the earth was just six thousand years old?