First off, lol @ "Essex Man." This is our Joe Sixpack. There's an entire category of jokes in England about women from Essex because of their stereotypes as huge sluts.sighyoung wrote:I thought this was an interesting piece on the difference between British and American conservatives, and the task the Republican party to remake itself:
http://www.culture11.com/node/32875?page_view=1
Discuss.
What's the difference between an Essex girl and a limousine? Not everyone's been in a limousine.
What's the difference between an Essex girl and a Cadbury's Cream Egg? You have to pay 20p to lick out a Cadbury's Cream Egg.
It's an interesting article. But before we pronounce the GOP dead let's see if Obama actually wins this election. That said, they do have major problems and I think more challenges ahead than the Tories. Going forward, do they try to divorce themselves from the religious right? This election makes it clear that there are two halves of the GOP that look down on each other, and the McCain/Palin ticket demonstrates that. What an odd couple they make. It looks increasingly like a marriage of convenience. If Obama wins on a platform of inclusion and "togetherness" what does that mean for the future of the kind of wedge issues the republicans were so fond of campaigning on?
In addition to that there seems to be a looming intellectual crisis for the party. If one half of the party worships a wrathful God, the other half worships the free market. Yet here we are, under a GOP administration, nationalizing the banking industry. The statements pertaining to this from McCain and his surrogates these days are truly nonsensical. In one breath they will extol the virtues of small government, fiscal conservatism, and minimal regulation but in the next breath propose buying $300 billion worth of troubled mortgages!
I think what the GOP is going to have to do is move to the left. Most conservatives in the UK would have no place in the conservative party here. We've got a GOP vice presidential candidate saying global warming isn't man-made for christ's sake! This kind of anti-intellectualism is not going to work in the 21st century (I hope). There are too many large groups of people who want nothing to do with the GOP, which seems to have become the party of religious fundamentalists and embittered free marketeers. Each of those archetypes are looking increasingly anachronistic.
