Brit Dishheads On Romney


Well, I asked for it. One Londoner writes:

In ANGLO SAXON terms: tone-deaf, shit-for-brains, gormless, charm-free. Going down like a cup of cold sick and featured in the first 3 minutes of the BBC ten o’clock news, in a highly disparaging fashion. FAIL. (Actually just the kind of wanker we need to FINALLY get behind the games!)

Another is more polite:

My view is that the British will first of all think of Romney as showing very poor manners. He’s a visitor – and a private citizen at that. He’s our guest in London, and as you will know from your British childhood, if you’re a guest, you have responsibilities. The transatlantic politics geek in me also thinks this may play appallingly with exactly the US voters Romney needs.

My imagination of an independent or swing voter is someone suspicious of government, deeply wedded to American exceptionalism and firmly of the belief (for reasons varying from the war to Downton Abbey to the Beatles and the Stones and many other shared cultural and political experiences) that while the British don’t run US policy, they are always, always deserving of complete respect and invariably worth agreeing with. This is exactly Obama’s attitude to the Brits – and he can be trusted to be a polite, dignified guest.

Another:

I’m an English Liberal Democrat but I have to say that Romney is an excellent advert for conservatism. Unfortunately for him it’s British conservatism, a philosophy I disagree with but one that looks commendably sane in comparison to his blundering, ill-informed and opaque, radical 0.001%ism. Long live the Tories!