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Telegraph - Big ideas? This feels like a local election, By Mark Steyn

Conversely, Michael Howard’s problem is that he isn’t George W Bush. I don’t mean that he needs to be the swaggering Texan cowboy of Guardian cartoons, but that he should have run as Governor Bush did in 2000, back when he was a “compassionate conservative”. Many of us uncompassionate conservatives felt rather queasy whenever young Dubya used the phrase, but he made it sound like a bold principled position, usually adding, “and on this ground I will make my stand!” Listening to him, you couldn’t help noticing the ground seemed pretty soft and that, after just a couple of minutes alongside him in his bog of clichés, your boots were beginning to squelch.

But he stuck to it. His line on education was “No child left behind.” We rolled our eyes in despair. Meanwhile, all the angry white guys of the impeachment-era Republican Party were left way behind. At the 2000 party convention, the podium was wall-to-wall women, gays, blacks and Hispanics. The only white male heterosexual other than Bush was a blind mountaineer, accompanied by his seeing-eye dog, the first canine up K2. I forget what the mountaineer was talking about - increased Federal funding for mandatory Braille notices on Everest (all faces), or some such.

Anyway, he was followed, if memory serves, by Miss Dominican Republic doing the lambada with the seeing-eye dog. You’d be trying to have a quiet chat with one of the elderly white male Rotarians banished to the back of the hall, and you could hardly hear a word over the on-stage mariachi band doing “La Cucaracha” or the cucaracha band doing “La Mariachi” or whatever the hell it was.

Meanwhile, the only Bush relative on prominent display was George P Bush, the “Hispanic nephew” - or “one of my little brown ones”, as George Bush Snr called him. He rallied the crowds with stirring paeans to Uncle Dubya. “Are you guys excited,” roared George P, “about electing a president who represents the diversity of our society?” Not really. We were excited about electing a rich white guy who’s made a little dough in the oil business. But, if this is what it takes, I figured we could put up with it for a few more weeks.

hahaha

Of course the end is depressing, but what isn’t these days? At any rate, read the rest.