Special Report’s Love Fest For Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher was a divisive figure in Great Britain. But if you blinked, you'd not know that from watching Special Report’s All-Star Panel earlier this week. Not only was a discouraging word nowhere to be heard, they all seemed to be competing for who could slobber over her the most.

Charles Krauthammer set the tone:

I think she has a two line epitaph. She single handedly saved her country from socialism. And together with just a few others, including Reagan, she helped to bury communism forever. …At home she was amazing. She faced down the union that even her party, the Tories, had given up on taming. She undid the sclerotic bureaucracy that she had inherited by selling off all the things that labor had nationalized, and selling them off in a way, including council housing, that would make stakeholders of ordinary citizens, stakeholders in the firms that she had denationalized, and stakeholders in their own homes.

And lastly, she sort of changed the zeitgeist of a country that had imagined that its decline and sclerosis were a result of history, you know, exhaustion by the end of the two World Wars and not policy. And in that way she, like Reagan, changed the ideological trajectory of her country.

Bret Baier called Thatcher “a character” who “had some great phrases that were …iconic.” He played “a great” one.

Mara Liasson gushed, “That is a real classic… That is incredible. She was a real character. She was absolutely made of steel.”

Steve Hayes: “She spoke with a clarity and a conviction that that we just don’t see in most politicians today. …She, I think, reminds us that it’s not always good to compromise. In fact, it’s often good not to compromise on behalf of your principles.”

Krauthammer: “I think every country at every time could use somebody as principled, and smart, and strong as she is.” He did acknowledge how widely despised she was before adding, “She had tremendous strength and courage.”

What was not mentioned? How Thatcher left England in recession, and with long term unemployment, inflation,and interest rates rising.

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commented 2013-04-13 13:37:08 -0400 · Flag

@ mlp !: It’s obvious why cons like their heroes dead—that way they don’t have to deal with the “bad” things those heroes might have done. (In Reagan’s case, for instance, raising taxes on the middle class many, many times, and exploding the budget deficit. In Thatcher’s case, though, I’m guessing most of their lionizing will exclude the last decade or so in which her dementia became obvious as well as how her own party thought she’d become too extreme for Britain—the latter part, especially, since it may strike too close to home for the cons who seem to be having to dealing with near-daily reports of how the GOP is on the verge of civil war with itself.)

commented 2013-04-13 11:30:22 -0400 · Flag

Ahhh, the conservatives are very big on dead heroes.
Ours are still alive.

commented 2013-04-13 11:18:36 -0400 · Flag

No surprises here. We knew this would be coming. It’s a chance for the right to reminisce about the Reagan years. We’ll see it again with total overkill when Nancy dies, compared to when Betty Ford and Lady Bird Johnson died that was just reported as news for a couple of days.

This is like a current losing sports franchise that once had its glory years to celebrate its past to help ignore the present, which my Lakers will be doing shortly.

commented 2013-04-12 23:49:24 -0400 · Flag

She single handedly saved her country from socialism.

Chuck, isn’t having national healthcare considered a sign of “socialism”? {At least it is here.}

And together with just a few others, including Reagan, she helped to bury communism forever.

They keep saying the same thing about Raygun, too — that he “defeated communism.”

I’m guessing China, Russia, Vietnam, the DPRK, and Cuba didn’t get that memo . . .

.

commented 2013-04-12 22:43:45 -0400 · Flag

Drove the economy into a deep recession. Engaged in numerous foreign wars. Sounds like the British version of Dumbya.