CentreRight

It's over

With the issuing of this press release, the European People's Party group in the European Parliament has finally conceded, after seventeen acrimonious years and numerous rearguard actions to keep the party in the group, that its formal association with the Conservative Party is over.

A press release from Joseph Daul MEP, the President of EPP said:

"Today, [the group] went back to its roots as the Group of the European People's Party (EPP), following the departure of the British Conservative and Czech ODS MEPs... The EPP Group has proposed that Mr Barroso commits to a 5-year legislative pact based on the main priorities of the EPP Warsaw Manifesto".

Given that the EPP's Warsaw Manifesto commits the group to pushing for "the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty", maintaining Europe's bloated "Social Market Economy" and rejecting the "ideas of market fundamentalists", it strikes me as an ideal time to get out.

The new Conservative group in the European Parliament - one characterized by a belief in market liberalism, institutional reform and an Atlanticist approach to foreign policy - will sit formally for the first time on July 14th.

The Conservatives - and kingmakers - in the European Parliament

According to the provisional results of the European elections, the European People's Party group has captured 264 seats in Strasbourg, way ahead of the Party of European Socialists with 162 MEPs.

In the United Kingdom, the Conservative Party captured twenty six seats – the same amount as the Labour and UKIP combined.

As seasoned observers of the European Parliament will know, the trans-national political group structure operated in the European Parliament makes it virtually impossible for any one political party to secure an outright majority in the 736-seat chamber. 

As such, the system necessitates that informal 'coalitions' operate between two or more of the Parliament’s groupings in order to allocate positions such as the Presidency of the chamber, senior committee appointments and to pass legislation in plenary.

The scale of defeat

Even the BBC has been forced to admit it: “the Conservatives have been the big winners in the local elections”.

After yesterday’s results, the Labour Party has simply ceased to be competitive in vast swathes of the country.

In the East of England, the Labour Party has essentially become an irrelevance on a local government level. Across each of the seven local authorities polled in the region on Thursday, the Labour Party secured only 19 (or 3.9%) of the 481 seats on offer. Labour now holds only 1 seat on Essex County Council, 2 in Cambridgeshire, 3 in Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk and 7 in Bedford, a parliamentary seat they easily won at the 2005 general election. 

Based on these results, Labour faces across-the-board meltdown across this crucial region; from coastal seats such as Great Yarmouth and Waveney to the New Towns of Basildon, Stevenage and Harlow which delivered Labour 10,000+ majorities at the ’97 election.

In Kent, where Labour narrowly clung onto the parliamentary seats of Chatham and Aylesford, Dartford, Dover, Gillingham, Medway, Sittingbourne and Sheppey and South Thanet at the 2005 general election, the party’s representation in County Hall has dropped from 20 to 2 seats. Labour even faced defeat in previously rock-solid wards like Sheerness and Swanscombe and Greenhithe which stayed loyal to Labour throughout the dark days of the late 1970s - their vote dropping by in excess of 20%.

Derek Desperate

An amusing aside... I was just discussing the Derek Draper controversy with a friend via text message and was amused to see that my BlackBerry, upon having the characters for the word ''Draper'' inputted, is hell-bent on displaying the word ''desperate''. Given recent events, that name seems rather apt!

£80,000 per hour - close, but no cigar!

You may have noticed (although, being a story about something that happened in the European Parliament, you probably haven’t) that Bill Clinton made an appearance yesterday at the Party of the European Socialist’s annual Global Progressive Forum in Brussels.

Speaking for just under an hour, Clinton shared his views with delegates on the state of the world economy, climate change and international development. Other conference participants included former European Commissioner Pascal Lamy, former Democratic Presidential candidate Howard Dean and former Danish Prime Minister and PES President Poul Nyrup Rasmussen.

For sharing his views, it is widely rumoured in the corridors of the European Parliament that Clinton was paid the princely sum of £80,000 - the going rate for a one hour speech by the cigar-lovin’ former President.

At £150,000, a one hour speech plus fifteen minutes of media questions, was deemed too expensive for the PES to justify.

Clinton's fee was paid from a general fund replenished each year by the generous 'information allowance' slush fund provided by the Parliament - and then 'top sliced' by the individual political groupings - to each MEP.

Is this really the kind of thing, in the middle of the present economic crisis, that the Party of the European Socialists should be squandering taxpayers’ money on?

And given that we’ve spent the last week listening to socialist heads of government complaining about the economy collapsing due to unrestrained greed; why should an ethically-challenged former politician get paid £80,000 per hour from public funds; when bankers, operating in the private sector, have just been told (by these same politicians) they will have their pay and bonuses more-closely regulated (again, by these same politicians).

Welcome to the tawdry world of international socialism.

Who are the "leaders" of the Republican Party?

On 7th November 2006, the Republican Party lost control of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Two years later, the party's presidential nominee John McCain was blown out the water by the young Illinois Senator Barack Obama by a margin of 365 electoral votes to 173. For the first time since 1994, the Republicans control none of American's three levers of governmental power.

The party, for all intents and purposes, lies in a state ruin; rudderless, leaderless.

Like the post-97 British Conservative Party, the numerous disparate voices clamouring for the affections of the party faithful - and the all-important independent voters - stike an imperfect cadence. The modernisers, the traditionalists, the small-staters, the big-staters, the religious conservatives, the urban liberals; the list is almost endless.

In this piece, I intend to explore some of the figures and influences who may help turn the fortunes of the Republican Party around after two of the most devastating election cycles in the party's history.

Arguments against nationalisation

A left-leaning Christian Democrat colleague has just fired over an interesting link to an blog post by Paul Krugman, a Keynesian economist who was recently awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics, outlining the various anti-nationalization arguments abounding on centre-right blogs across the globe.

It's well worth a look.

Among the arguments Krugman outlines (and then promptly disagrees with), I find the following response to a blog post by Alan Blinder particularly interesting:

"...why can’t a bank just split itself, giving the bad stuff to one piece and the good stuff to the other? Because it has to divvy up the liabilities as well as the assets. And if it gives the bad bank (which isn’t solvent) a bunch of the liabilities, this amounts to defaulting on its debts — and the bondholders will sue. So the good bank-bad bank thing seems to implicitly carry the assumption that someone, namely you and me in our capacity as taxpayers, guarantees the bad bank’s liabilities"

While human beings are naturally hesitant to leave their comfort zones, Krugman's 'Conscience of a Liberal' blog is well worth the occasional browse.

Hugo Chávez cares nothing for human rights

International news coverage this morning was dominated by news that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has won a narrow 54-46% victory in a national referendum approving the abolition of term limits for elected officials. The hard left are, predictably, cock-a-hoop at the victory of a "democrat" and "champion of the poor".

Less well publicised, however, is Chávez's decision on Sunday to expel Spanish Partido Popular MEP Luis Herrero, a guest of the opposition Un Nuevo Tiempo party, from the country.

According to the Miami Herald, Herrero was "shoved into a car, accompanied by about seven plainclothes policemen, driven to the airport and put on the next flight out" of Venezeula after describing Chávez as a "dictator" and voicing fears that he would engage in electoral fraud in order to rig the referendum in his favour.

Herrero's case is not an isolated one. In September, two representatives of Human Rights Watch were surrounded by twenty military police and forcibly deported from the country for launching this insightful report into Chávez's habitual abuses of civil society, the media, courts and organised labor. On a daily basis, numerous opposition members are beaten and their families intimidated for their refusal to blindly support Chávez and his crony-dominated government.

Chávez - and his naive supporters - may conceal his actions behind fig leaves of democracy but, in practice, his brand of personality politics and ruthless suppression of political opponents appears to be more closely modelled on the management style of Juan Perón than a more genuine (if occasionally misjudged) sincerity to reduce poverty such as that shown by the Lula government in Brazil.

Chávez may well have won the right to stand for another term but let's hope that - as with our own Labour Party - his fourth term eludes him.

Is there an international development "industry"?

There's an interesting post today from my friend Ben Harnwell on his insightful new Brussels Dispatch blog.

Reading his piece, it occurs to me that the huge army that exists to regulate international development would be out of their collective 'jobs' were the poor to actually become rich: their ideal world would be one in which increasing amounts of money needed to be regulated and disbursed - whilst the poor moved only incrementally forward in prosperity. Not too much to obviate the need for international support - but not too slow to fundamentally discredit the machinery.

Do take a look.

Please, let's have some consistency

I've seen Geert Wilders' film Fitna. I didn't think much of it.

It's distasteful, misleading and unneccessarily inflammatory. On top off that, I fear that in the hands of certain people the film could be used to stir up racial hatred and tensions that can only play into the hands of political extremists like the BNP.

That said, I've never believed that the way to tackle intolerance is to forcibly close down debate about unsavoury or uncomfortable topics. The way you defeat extremists is through an open, intelligent and reasoned public debate which highlights just how ludicrous their views really are.

By refusing Geert Wilders, an elected Member of Parliament from a democratic country like the Netherlands, entry into the United Kingdom all Jacqui Smith has done is raise awareness of his tawdry film (freely available following a three second Google search) and increase opportunities for the BNP to rail against the so-called "liberal elite" who defend our multi-ethnic society.

Wilders, as unedifying a man as he may be, does at least appear to be a democrat.  He has not called for the elimination of entire states and ethnicities or the forcible incorporation of any country into an Islamic caliphate.

The same cannot be said for many of the individuals this government has allowed to freely walk the streets of our towns and cities spreading their brand of debauched bile.  The names of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Abu Hamza al-Masri and Abu Qatada instantly spring to mind.  Similarly, the British government was less than forceful in its efforts to block Robert Mugabe from attending the European Union's Africa summit in Lisbon in December 2007, instead opting to stage a headline-snatching faux boycott of the meeting.

Please; let's have some consistency from Jacqui Smith and this Labour government.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

It's no secret that the overwhelming majority of Brussels Eurocrats were positively overjoyed at the election of President Barack Obama, but don't you think this promotional graphic for the European Parliament's 2009 election coverage is going a little far?

Then again, they do say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery...!

Why the Republican Party is like Detroit

Over at the National Public Radio blog there's an interesting piece from Newt Gingrich advisor Merrill Matthews comparing the Republican Party's recent woes to those of the City of Detroit.

The "motor city" is, of course, in terminal decline with almost 11% of its population out of work, a median house sale price of just £5,300 over the last three months (yes, you read that correctly), a Mayor who recently finished a four month prison sentence following multiple convictions for obstruction of justice...

Take a look.

Hat tip: Syed Kamall

You've gotta laugh...

Hat tip: Phil Martin

The EPP is to blame for putting Britain’s Working Time Directive opt-out in peril

The debate about whether or not the Conservatives should remain in the EPP group in the European Parliament has largely centred around arguments about the tensions between the group's Euro-federalist outlook and our decidedly more sceptical position. 

Acknowledging that some tensions exist, supporters of British EPP membership have tried to paint the EPP as Tories in the Ken Clarke mould; perhaps a little more pro-European than others, yet firm market liberals and excellent Conservatives nonetheless.  This is as insulting to Mr Clarke as it is disingenuous. 

The position taken by the group on an amendment moved by Spanish Socialist Alejandro Cercas calling for the abolition of Britain's opt-out from the Working Time Directive points at profound differences in political philosophy and provides yet more proof that the British Conservatives should leave the EPP group in the European Parliament.

How would you reform the House of Lords?

Iain Dale’s timely blog post about the need for Bishops sitting in the House of Lords to avoid party politics has got me thinking.  Am I alone in noticing that the issue of House of Lords reform has almost completely disappeared from the political agenda?   

Firstly, I can understand, even if I disagree with their ability to do so, the value of allowing Bishops to contribute to Lords debates about moral issues such as the right to life.  I'm constantly reminded, however, of an outrageous speech delivered in the Lords by Archbishop John Sentamu this summer in which he ridiculed Eurosceptics and passionately endorsed the European Constitution. 

As a private citizen, I have no problem with the Archibishop Sentamu voicing his support for the European Constitution, however misguided I may believe his views to be.  As a representative of the national faith, however, who sits in the Lords by virtue of being the Archbishop of York rather than Mr John Sentamu, he has no right to involve himself in such matters. 

Secondly, I have never heard a convincing argument as to why Britain should remain the only country in the world other than Swaziland to still allow tribal chieftains - yes, herediary peers - to sit in our national legislature.  Aside from this unacceptable anomoly, one only need look at the 357 life peers created by Tony Blair (as compared to 341 created during the Thatcher and Major years) to conclude that the chamber is broadly reliant on party-political patronage as opposed to genuine ability.

Re: Channel 4 should be utterly ashamed

The reputation of public service broadcasting in the UK has taken a knock in the past few months; be it the BBC's Ross/Brand fiasco or Channel 4's  recent willingness to provide a platform for a man who believes Israel "must be wiped off the map" and sanctions the execution of gay teenagers.

As their broadcasts become more and more removed from the fundamental principle of 'public service broadcasting', the future of the BBC and Channel 4 must be seriously reconsidered. 

Proponents of the continuation of the BBC's present charter arrangements frequently argue that specialist local and cultural broadcasting would suffer at the hands of a part-privatised BBC.  This needn't be so.  Indeed, the reverse could well be true.

Surely it is now time, with channels such as Sky News, Fox News, CNN and even more peripheral players like Al Jazeera providing the type of national and international news coverage which could once only be provided by Auntie Beeb, for the organisation to withdraw from the crowded field of 24 hour national and international news provision?  Existing - and in parts outstanding - elements of the BBC's national and international news services such as the corporation's website could be legitimately privatised.

The paranoia of Ms Mary Honeyball

A lady named Mary Honeyball, who I am led to believe is a Labour Member of the European Parliament for London, has got her knickers in a twist about the latest RyanAir Christmas charity calendar. 

Quoting portions of a report from the Women's Rights and Gender Equality committee of the European Parliament, Honeyball calls for affirmative action to combat "harmful" and "damaging" gender stereotyping in advertising and slams the "self-regulatory" nature of the British Advertising Standards Authority.

"Why are Irish children", she fumes, "protected from growing up surrounded by sexist stereotypes when British children are not?".

Ms Honeyball is clearly rather exercised by this issue, asking visitors to her website vote in an online poll as to whether or not they consider "Ryanair's advertising for its 'bare all' [it is not a "bare all calendar] calendar offensive and derogatory to women?".

Indeed, it's difficult to see what else Ms Honeyball does in the European Parliament aside from writing rather paranoid blog posts about the plight of women in western society. Of the 191 blog posts she has made since she launched her website in February 2008, the majority have been dedicated to gender issues.

Highlights include:

• Cyprus appoints women commissioner
• No women for new top EU posts
• Bonkers Boris sacks women
• Iceland appoints two women bank chief executives

One could be mistaken, given the tone of many of Ms Honeyball's postings, for thinking European women toiled under the same conditions as those imposed by the Al Saud family in Saudi Arabia.

Whilst no sane person could disagree that women have traditionally been grossly under-represented in the world of business and politics and that problems such as pay disparities between genders must be eliminated is Ms Honeyball's time, especially during the present economic criss, best occupied by campaigning against a charity campaign which raises more than €100,000 each year to provide emergency shelter for Dublin's homeless community?

Illinois Governor arrested for trying to sell Obama's open Senate seat

The Governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich was taken into custody by the FBI a few minutes ago for, amongst other things, attempting to sell his gift of an appointment to the Senate seat left open following Barack Obama's election to the Presidency.

US attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who has filed more than seventy pages of corruption charges against the Governor, said:

"The breadth of corruption laid out in these charges is staggering... Blagojevich put a 'for sale' sign on the naming of a United States Senator; involved himself personally in pay-to-play schemes with the urgency of a salesman meeting his annual sales target; and corruptly used his office in an effort to trample editorial voices of criticism"

According the charge sheet, Blagojevich had the following to say about Obama's open Senate seat:

"I’ve got this thing and it’s f****g golden, and, uh, uh, I’m just not giving it up for f***n’ nothing. I’m not gonna do it. And, and I can always use it. I can parachute me there... I want to make money”

Even before his arrest, Blagojevich's approval rating stood at a paltry 11%.  It’s fair to say it may now have dropped even further!

A full copy of the 78-page list of charges filed in the Northern District of Illinois Eastern Divsion District Court can be found can be found here. Explosive stuff.

Re: Get our nurses back to nursing

My sister, a nurse at a busy inner-city hospital in South London, has e-mailed me the following comments to add to Dr Crippen's earlier post:

"He's right.  The auxiliary staff working in NHS hospitals who describe themselves as 'nurses' really should not be doing so.  'Auxiliary nurses' - or 'healthcare assistants' to give them their correct title - often have no healthcare qualifications and receive no formal training. 

"I can recall cases when auxiliary 'nurses' have been placed on wards whilst unable to even take a patient's blood pressure - one of the most basic elements of medical training. 

"In one particular hospital in South West London, an auxiliary 'nurse' was asked to take a set of observations on a post-operative patient and as a result of her lack of medical training she failed to spot a major deterioration in a patient’s condition which ultimately resulted in them suffering a cardiac arrest.

"Yes, real nurses should go back to nursing and healthcare assistants should not be relied on unless they have successfully passed through a formally-assessed training programme to ensure they are fully competent before placing them in wards"

Clearly, it's more nurses we need, not a government whose policies place potentially dangerously unqualified staff on our hospital wards.

Another Stéphane Dion PR disaster

Canadian Liberal leader Stéphane Dion's address to the nation last night was supposed to be his opportunity to convince an already sceptical public of the merits of a 'grand coalition' between his party, the Bloc Québécois and hard-left New Democratic Party.  With the Canadian economy in turmoil and anti-government feeling running high, it was a chance to put some blue water between his coalition and Stephen Harper's Conservative Party.

Well, the reviews are in - and they're not good. 

"Some said the amateur-looking tape that aired Wednesday night looked like video from a camera phone. Others joked it was taped by people holding Dion hostage.

"But what's dead serious is that the Liberal leader's message - a defence of his coalition with the NDP, and a rebuttal to Prime Minister Stephen Harper's earlier address about the political crisis on Parliament Hill - was nearly eclipsed by the medium. 

"While Dion's face was out of focus, the books in the background were not - including the book, Hot Air. It was shot from an uncomfortably tight angle. And on the French version of the address, Dion's face was an unnatural shade of pink.

"The tape was meant to air one minute after Harper's address ended, at about 7:10 p.m. Instead, the Liberals showed up more than half an hour late, according to an official at the National Press Gallery.  Meanwhile, TV anchors were forced to kill time while they waited for the tape...

"The video went to air 20 minutes after it was supposed to -and after CTV gave up waiting and resumed regular programming, likely costing Dion a couple of hundred thousand viewers.

It's astonishing, given the media age we live in, that his advisors could have allowed such a poorly-produced video anywhere near prime-time television.

Dion's latest public relations triumph follows this occasion during the October General Election campaign upon which he was, struggling with his poor grasp of the English language, repeatedly unable to articulate his tax policies.

Lamentable!

The EPP: In Their Own Words

It's a well known fact that the overwhelming majority of Conservative Party members support the party's immediate exit from the pro-federalist European People's Party grouping in the European Parliament.

Yesterday's reports of the treatment of Swedish Eurosceptic Dr Lars Wohlin at the hands of the leadership of EPP group on this and Daniel Hannan MEP's excellent blog once again prove the urgency with which the Conservative Party must withdraw from the alliance.

Beyond the petty and vindictive nature of the EPP's leadership towards anyone who so much as questions le grand projet (which, in itself, is a reason for us to leave), the policy positions espoused by the group differ from those of the British Conservatives in the same way as night differs from day.  Scratch below the surface - or rather spend ten minutes on the EPP website's own internal search engine – and you will find abundant proof of the ideological mismatch between the British Conservatives and the wider EPP group.

POLITICAL ISSUES

• "The EPP favours a federal Europe based on subsidiarity"
• "The EPP is committed to making its own contribution to the process of bringing EU policies closer to the people... We expect our member parties to give much more prominence to the European dimension in both their internal debates and electoral campaigning"
• "The EPP-ED Group has worked consistently and successfully to consolidate the European Union on the bases of the primacy of law... The EPP-ED Group is the political centre in Europe"
• "The EU needs to continue streamlining its decision-making practices and its institutional balance. The guiding idea in this endeavour can only be a federalist one"

EUROPEAN CONSTITUTION

• "In January 2001, the EPP called for a Convention to elaborate a Constitutional Treaty for the EU. At the Estoril Congress of October 2002, the EPP presented its ideas for a “Constitution for a Strong Europe”. Many of these ideas became part of the Draft Treaty because the EPP played a major role within the Convention. Our ambition was to shape the new Constitutional Treaty"
• "The EPP is convinced that it was the right decision to draft a Constitutional Treaty as a 27 new basis for the European Union... our citizens want a strong Europe and they want Europe to deliver an added value and to deal with the problems that concern them"
• "The national framework alone is no longer in a position to be able to guarantee the common good of all European citizens in all its aspects... that is why the EPP supports a European Constitution"
• "The EU must first and foremost be seen as a constitutional union based on common values. This means that the limits of the Union are not by nature geographical, economical or political, but that membership of the EU is more related to accepting a common constitution"

FOREIGN POLICY

• "Right from the beginning the EPP-ED Group has actively participated in the setting up of the European Security and Defence Policy... it will remain one of the driving forces of this process aiming at establishing a Security and Defence Union with joint defence forces and a common arms policy"
• "[We support the introduction of] a High representative for the Common Foreign and Security policy responsible for the EU's external relations and actions, backed by a European diplomatic service" 
• "EU Member States should reflect on the best way to be represented in the structures of the various international organisations. The EPP favours a single EU representation wherever possible, and certainly in those organisations responsible for issues falling under the Union's competences. Where a single representation is not possible, the Member States should pledge to coordinate their position"

Election 2008 is far from over

It was clear, by little after 1am GMT on the morning of 5th November, that the Republican Party had suffered a painful defeat at the hands of the Democrats. The party lost the Oval Office and watched scores of seats in the House of Representatives slip away. But they'd only, at that point, lost five Senate seats and it appeared as if they may have defied the pundits' expectations by holding onto several other 'at risk' seats. 

However, early hopes that Oregon's Gordon Smith and Alaska's Ted Stevens (who would have been expelled from the Senate in January following his corruption conviction and replaced by a nominated Republican replacement) would hold their seats were quickly dashed.

Despite leading until nearly 90% of the vote had been counted Smith was overwhelmed by a surge of late-reporting results from Democrat strongholds while absentee ballots from the Democrat-leaning Anchorage area turned an election night majority of 3,000 for Stevens into a Democratic gain by 3,724 votes. That took the Democrats to fifty eight Senate seats - two away from the sixty seats at which they gain a "supermajority and the power to override filibusters and pass any bill they please".

Even now, eighteen days after election day, the fates of Republican incumbents Saxby Chambliss and Norm Coleman, remain undecided.

What kind of foreign policy can we expect from the Obama administration?

On Tuesday evening, I was delighted to have the opportunity to attend a timely and fascinating lecture by Jonathan S. Paris, a London-based adjunct fellow of the Hudson Institute, on the foreign policies we can expect from the Obama administration.

Aside from discussing the incoming administration’s likely approach to Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, Paris offered a range of varied and interesting observations:

• Barack Obama is a law professor. He will govern as one

As a law professor, Obama is well versed in the art of weighing up issues and arguments methodologically. In taking decision he will draw on the advice of a wide range of advisors led by his newly-appointed Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel and Vice-President Joe Biden. Unlike the Bush administration, whose foreign policy outlook was shaped by a small cabal of advisors who wilfully ignored the State Department, policy formation will not be “top down” but rather “bottom up”. In a similar way to which President John F. Kennedy brought a set of celebrated Harvard academics to his White House, Obama’s administration will be greatly influenced by his friends and former colleagues from the Chicago political circuit. 

European Investment Bank loans: opportunity or threat?

The BBC are reporting that Alistair Darling has issued a statement urging British companies to take advantage of £4 billion in loans available to them from the European Investment Bank.

Syed Kamall, the ever-vigilant Conservative MEP for London and spokesman for International Trade in the European Parliament, has quickly pointed out that the loans are, according to the EIB's own website, granted only to projects designed to "further the objectives of the European Union".

So, is this another example of EU attempts to extend their sphere of influence over British business or a golden opportunity our financial institutions would be fools not to take up? Discuss.

Obama 15, McCain 6

Ladies and gentlemen, we have our first result.

The voters of Dixville Notch, a sleepy New Hampshire village whose twenty one electors make a point of voting en masse shortly after midnight on election day, have delivered Barack Obama a landslide 15 vote to 6 victory over John McCain.

It is the first time since 1968 that the town has not supported the Republican Presidential nominee.