Sarah Palin supporters have reacted furiously to reports that Margaret Thatcher’s aides have deemed a meeting inappropriate.
A firestorm on the US right has erupted after the Guardian reported that Sarah Palin will be denied a meeting with Lady Thatcher on the grounds that it would be “belittling” for her to meet the darling of the Tea Party movement.
Rush Limbaugh, the conservative radio host, devoted the opening section of his radio show to denouncing the “preposterous” Guardian report, as Palin supporters accused Thatcher’s circle of disgracing the former prime minister.
The US conservative right reacted furiously after the Guardian reported that Thatcher’s aides had decided it would be inappropriate for her to meet Palin, who is planning to visit London next month en route to Sudan. Palin has been touring US historical sites (an excursion that saw her slip up this week on the subject of Paul Revere, the American patriot who made a famous “midnight ride” to warn of approaching British forces).
One Thatcher ally told the Guardian: “Lady Thatcher will not be seeing Sarah Palin. That would be belittling for Margaret. Sarah Palin is nuts.”
The former prime minister’s friends say she will show the level she punches at when she marks the centenary of the birth of Ronald Reagan by attending the unveiling of a statue of the late president outside the US embassy in Grosvenor Square on independence day, 4 July. The Thatcher ally added: “Margaret is focusing on Ronald Reagan and will attend the unveiling of the statue. That is her level.”
When Thatcher was Prime Minister, American and British conservatives were bosom buddies. British monetarists took their inspiration from Milton Friedman and the Chicago school of economics, and both administrations watched each other’s fiscal experiments with interest. In foreign policy there were isolated differences – Reagan was a multilateralist, Thatcher was a fan of the nuclear deterrent. But they both believed Communism could be defeated and were united in their disregard for detent. Back then, The Lady kept an open door for visiting American conservatives. In 1975, she even met with Alabama Governor George Wallace (as did Labour PM Hard Wilson). Wallace was the man who declared “segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” at his inauguration, the first salvo in a violent struggle to keep Alabama’s schools racially segregated. He was married to a former water-ski champion and had an unpleasant habit of constantly spitting into a handkerchief, regardless of the stature of the company he was in. For redneck nuttiness, Wallace was at the top of his game.
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