Tea party

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/angelamerkel-sburden/media.mp3″ title=”Freddy Gray, Sebastian Payne and Owen Bennett discuss where Ukip went wrong” startat=685] Listen [/audioplayer]What’s happened to poor Ukip? Not so long ago, they seemed unstoppable. They were revolting on the right, terrifying the left and shaking up Westminster. The established parties tried sneering at them, smearing them, even copying them. Nothing worked. Then came the general election, the centre held, and Ukip seemed to fall apart. Farage failed to win his target seat in South Thanet, the focus of his whole campaign. He resigned, then farcically unresigned, three days later. The ‘Ukip wars’ followed: after an unseemly row over ‘Short money’ — the funding provided by the

I think I have seen Nigel Farage’s future, and it is not pretty. A copy of Farage’s The Purple Revolution reached my desk today. The cover instantly reminded me of a cover manifesto for Ron Paul, the once inspiring libertarian radical who has turned into something of a crank. On Farage’s book, the word LOVE has been mirrored on to the word Revolution. Ron Paul posters used to employ the same silly trick. As did Russell Brand. It is becoming a sort of logo for anti-establishment feeling. It is also hilariously crap. ‘Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket,’ said Eric Hoffer. The quote certainly

   Washington DC [audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_20_Nov_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Michael Lind and Sebastian Payne discuss the growing similarities of the Britain and American right” startat=1350] Listen [/audioplayer]Amid all the commentary about the Republican party’s triumph in America’s midterm elections, a remarkable fact was ignored: in style and substance, the American right is rapidly becoming a lot more like Britain’s. And that might be the key to its success. In the last generation, American right-wingers have stood proudly apart from their counterparts in Europe, Britain, Canada and Australia. They were more religious, and more supportive of mass immigration. But that is changing. Exhibit A is the dwindling influence of the religious right in the US.

If the past few weeks are any indication, conservative Republicans learned very little from the 2012 election. While the party’s establishment tries to claw its way back from defeat, tea partiers and neoconservatives have decided to double-down on obstructionism. Less than a week after nearly derailing the fiscal cliff negotiations, tea partiers threaten to drive the U.S. into default in the coming debt-ceiling showdown. Meanwhile, neoconservatives are sharpening their knives over foreign policy realist Chuck Hagel, whom President Obama nominated this week for Secretary of Defence. Mired in ideological infighting, how can the Republican Party rescue itself? The answer, surprisingly enough, is Richard Milhous Nixon. Nixon, born 100 years ago

They may have failed to install one of their candidates as the Republican’s presidential nominee, but the Tea Party is having better luck in other elections. Last night, Ted Cruz — backed by Sarah Palin, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul — beat Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst 57-43 in the Republican primary for Texas’s senate election in November. Despite being outspent nearly three-to-one, Cruz — who has never run for office before — achieved a remarkable turnaround. In the first round of the primary just nine weeks ago, Dewhurst beat him 45-34 (as neither got more than 50 per cent it went down to last night’s run-off). In the second round,

Hysteria has lapsed into disaffection: it was a bleak night for President Obama. But, despite the apparent immediacy of a ‘conservative moment’, there is caution in Republican circles this morning: both Clinton and Reagan won from similar positions in 1982 and 1994. The G.O.P’s leadership knows that elections are not won from the extremes, as Barack Obama has discovered to his cost, and it is trying to calm the party’s often excitable fringe, which will be no easy task if Rand Paul’s ‘Tea Party tidal wave’ is anything to go by. Ben Brogan recently highlighted the G.O.P’s growing ‘Stop Palin’ campaign, and David Frum adds his voice again. Chancers and

Election night two years ago was not a good night for the GOP. Not only had it lost the White House but also all those predictions about how social trends and demographics were making America more Democrat appeared to be coming true.  In the south, Virginia and North Carolina shifted to the Democratic column. In the mid-West, Indiana went for the Democratic candidates for the first time since 1964. I was watching the results come in that night with an informal adviser to the McCain campaign and that evening it was hard to see how the Republicans could get to 270 in future with the upper south moving into swing