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Does Cameron Need to Meet with Elected Republicans?

Doesn’t David Cameron know that Republicans love the bust of Winston Churchill and never want to let it go? Perhaps not. Nile Gardiner is horrified that Cameron won’t be meeting with GOP and movement figures during his visit (via Massie): It is a short-sighted approach with significant long-term risks. David Cameron’s visit to the United […]

Doesn’t David Cameron know that Republicans love the bust of Winston Churchill and never want to let it go? Perhaps not. Nile Gardiner is horrified that Cameron won’t be meeting with GOP and movement figures during his visit (via Massie):

It is a short-sighted approach with significant long-term risks. David Cameron’s visit to the United States this week is a lost opportunity. In addition to meeting with the President, Cameron should be reaching out to Republican leaders and the American conservative movement.

Of such things is manufactured outrage made. Maybe Cameron ought to have arranged to meet with some of the Congressional leadership, but there are no long-term risks in any of this for Cameron or Britain, significant or otherwise. Suppose that Romney wins the election. Is he going to hold it against Cameron that the PM didn’t meet with Republicans in Congress? After all of the phony controversy over how Obama has supposedly trashed the “special relationship,” are Republicans likely to hold a grudge over something as irrelevant as Cameron’s March 2012 itinerary? Anything’s possible, but this isn’t going to happen. It’s not as if Cameron can meet with one of the Republican presidential candidates without being accused of picking favorites, and it’s probably not very practical for him to arrange meetings with all of them.

Massie reviews the list of politicians and comments:

I suppose little harm could come from a courtesy chat with Speaker Boehner. But what would be the point of meeting Eric Cantor or, god help us, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen? What could they possibly usefully talk about?

Meeting with either of the latter would be a no-win situation for Cameron. Especially when it comes to foreign policy, Cantor and Ros-Lehtinen are absurdly hard-line when compared to Cameron, so they couldn’t discuss much of substance without risking acrimony. More to the point, what would be the purpose of having him meet Daniels or Christie? Gardiner plucked their names out of the air to round out the list, but other than being semi-famous as presidential candidates-that-weren’t there wouldn’t be much of a reason for the British PM to meet with them, either. I can imagine why many elected Republicans would like to be seen with Cameron, since they place so much importance on appearing as Anglophiles, but for Cameron such meetings would mostly be a nuisance.

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