Tip O'Neill was so right. Here's an example from jolly old U.K. re Tony Blair:
Exhibit A
Blair 'must admit war was mistake'
Tony Blair has faced a chorus of demands to admit he committed British forces to the Iraq war on the basis of a fundamentally flawed assessment of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Doubts about Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction programmes were underlined by the resignation of David Kay, the US official who has spent eight months heading up the Iraq Survey Group's search for WMD. Mr Kay left his post saying that in his view, there was no large scale WMD production programme in Iraq during the 1990s, and there are no stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons to be found.
Exhibit B
Top-up fee rebels 'damaging party'
Labour backbenchers who vote against university top--up fees will damage the Government, the party's general election prospects and universities, Home Secretary David Blunkett has warned. With the clock ticking to Tuesday's critical Commons vote on variable tuition fees Mr Blunkett, a former Education Secretary, appealed to would-be rebels to think again. In a statement to PA News, Mr Blunkett said: "I hope those MPs and constituency parties who continue to have doubts will reflect on the damage that would be caused to the Government if we lost the vote on higher education funding.
Which one is more important? Which might bring Blair down? And if you answered A, think again.
Now apply this logic to NH, and every other state primary and general election.
see Tony Blair diaries over the last 24 hours, including
here and
here. The fees in and of themselves must be taken as a whole.
But coming back to the US, who woulda thunk a concession speech would have as much interplay and remixing as Star Wars Kid? Or better yet, four year old opinions about the Iowa caucuses?
Never underestimate what plays locally. If politics were truly national, we'd have some clue regarding what's going on in Kaleefornia.