As If They Still Mattered

It took the Tories at least the whole of the 1997 Parliament to cotton on that they were no longer in government. They sincerely believed that they were. In this as in so many other things, they were aided and abetted by the BBC, which continued to lavish attention on their every minor spokesperson, and on occasion even to refer to them as “the Government”, at least all the way up to the 2001 Election.

Today, something similar may be seen in the behaviour of the ostensibly conservative George Bush groupies in the British press, among other places. The likes of Charles Krauthammer are quoted as if they were in any meaningful sense still alive. And even the “Christian Zionists”, whose beliefs (unlike the views of the neocons) the commentators do not remotely share on any question except Israel, which they support for wholly different and indeed antithetical reasons, are given at least a certain deference.

But no one who matters is listening to the neocons any more; even quite how long Robert Kagan would have lasted as John McCain’s Secretary of State is an open question which will of course always remain so. And with the votes of few or no “Christian Zionists” (a small, if noisy, minority of Evangelical Protestants, almost certainly not including Sarah Palin), President Obama has been comfortably elected.

This is a far worse defeat both for neoconservatism and for “Christian Zionism” than the Tories suffered in 1997, 2001 or 2005. The neocons, who had assumed that Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee, had thought that they were irremovable, in office regardless of mere elections. But they have now been removed, and are out of office as a direct consequence of an election.

And the “Christian Zionists”, so very good at selling themselves as all but the totality of at least the white Evangelical vote, have seen their nightmare candidate eat deep into that constituency, so that they are now not just theologically illiterate, but also electorally irrelevant.