Our friends at National Review’s The Corner – America’s foremost Conservative group blog – were devastated on Britain’s behalf at the disrespect Barack Obama showed “America’s closest ally” in his early days in office.
In particular, the decision to return the Churchill bust had them flogging each other into paroxysms of indignation. “The President has never even mentioned the Anglo-American alliance in a major policy speech, and has little affinity for Britain,” complained Nile Gardiner.
“How can you explain a policy toward Britain that makes no strategic or moral sense?” asked Charles Krauthammer. “And even if you can, how do you explain the gratuitous slaps to the Czechs, Poles, Indians, and others? Perhaps when an Obama Doctrine is finally worked out, we shall learn whether it was pique, principle, or mere carelessness.”
The ‘Churchill’s bust’ meme has recurred regularly ever since, as a symbol of a relationship that is irretrievably broken. Here’s race-baiter Mark Steyn sewing it into a 2009 piece on Muslim-take-over, in which he suggests that, due to Churchill’s views on Islam, ” the bust will almost certainly be arrested at Heathrow and deported as a threat to public order.” Hah-bloody-hah.
So how did today’s love-in between President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron go down with the Cornerites? Huge relief that the special relationship is at last on the mend? Or, instead, concern that our centre-right PM clearly has much more in common with America’s centre-left extreme-socialist leader than any of the candidates for the Republican nomination?
Neither. Just stony silence (so far, at least) in the right-wing echo chamber.
