Gordon Brown's Brilliant Move

Gordon Brown's rendezvous with Lady Thatcher would make Machiavelli proud. His praise of her as a "conviction politician" and his recent comment of hanging her portrait in 10 Downing Street will deliver a good punch to David Cameron's nascent Conservative Party.

Going right for the bait, Cameron flack Rob Wilson said "Whilst some of my weak-minded colleagues are fair game for Mr Brown, Baroness Thatcher at 81 - we know she's frail, we know she's lonely, and she does have difficulty, without going into too much detail, with her memory," What a tosser.

Conservative party supporters are a seperate entity than Cameron's Conservatives. (By that I mean the way the leadership of the party is not neccesarily, and in fact is not, in fact a representation of the Party's grassroots.) Although I have noticed that the Tories want rid of the Labour Government no matter how pathetic and incoherent their Tories are, Cameron keeps poking the eye of the Traditionalist base of the Conservative Party. To patronize Baroness Thatcher the way they did will only flare up these tensions. It will create infighting that will dominate the media cycle taking Cameron off his message.

If you ask me, Cameron has had some really good moments lately. His support for getting rid of the marriage penalty, his recent BBC interview, his focus on crime using the term "broken society" and promising a "bare-knuckled fight" over Gordon Brown's cuts to the NHS, were all very positive politically. Oh, and dont forget him going after Gordo for lying about the EU referendum. But then he always does something to, well... screw himself over. Why would you ever propose a tax hike on alchohol in England? Talk about electoral suicide. Why offset your proposed tax cuts with "green taxes"? I admire Dave's effort to retake the environmental mantle from Labour, but why not do something progressive and offer tax cuts for behavior that cuts down on pollution? That could be completely unique and a policy model for the rest of the world! ugh.

A journalist frien of mine once said "politics is a guessing game". How insightful is that? Gordon kissed Maggie's ring and generated a few negative press releases from the Unions. But he has capitol to spend. Cameron doesn't. Brown guessed right. He got Team Cameron to criticize Thatcher. Brown 1 Cameron 0.