I greatly admire Dan Hannan (not least because he is a trenchant critic of that awful body to which he belongs) so perhaps, given his current circumstances (yes I'm linking to the Indy for a laugh, before you ask), now is the time for all good men to come to his aid and say nothing that is at all critical.
But I'm afraid that I must join with Melanie Phillips in expressing doubt over his (admittedly tentative) embrace of Barack Obama.
Dan and I share our proud support of the Republican Party (unlike some of our parliamentarians, about whom - I think - the less said the better; Dan disagrees, by asking if there are any Tories for Obama - of course there will be... sigh). If we on this side of the pond have any effect on such things whatsoever, surely we ought to be pushing our favoured side.
Why, then, offer praise - even half-heartedly - to the Senate's most liberal member?
For that's the point, to my mind. Hannan tries to make a "conservative case" for Obama. But, for all their flaws - and for what it's worth, my preferred (non)-candidate was Gingrich (and then Thompson, and then Romney...) so the McCain supremacy was hardly my desired outcome - the Republican bench are all properly conservative - not people for whom a case might be made, but for whom such a case needn't be made.
On the other hand, the great Janet Daley takes standard British coverage of the US election season to task in an enjoyably waspish piece in the Telegraph. She makes the point that, far from lending Obama the lustre of Camelot, Teddy "Chappaquiddick" Kennedy's endorsement of him is in fact a "kiss of death" - because Teddy is just so liberal.
Well, this is the very point that I'd try to make to Dan and - more forcefully - to those in our ranks really tempted to offer support to the Democrats. The Democratic Party is no longer the Party of JFK - or Truman, or FDR. All three would be aghast at the sight of the extremity of the liberalism to which their party has been dragged - and they've been dragged there by the likes of Obama. He may sound moderate, but he ain't.
For the record, the "no longer the party of Truman" argument isn't mine, it's Pat (and yes there's a lot on which we disagree) Buchanan's - he offers it in his trenchant introduction to Barry Goldwater's excellent and profoundly influential The Conscience of a Conservative. It is a product of its time; some of it's no longer relevant and some is no longer quite on the money but nevertheless I would include it in any list of must-read books.
