What can future GOP leaders learn from Margaret Thatcher?

September 10, 2009
By patrick

Don’t hem yourself in with too much detail, i.e. avoid the spewing-at-the-mouth disease that plagues our current President. MEP Daniel Hannan is writing with regard to UK Tory leader David Cameron, but the advice is applicable to US GOP candidates.

Those who clamour for more detail from David Cameron would do well to look at what Thatcher was saying at this stage in the cycle – that is, in late 1978. Although the direction she intended to take was evident, she was careful not to box herself in with detailed commitments. She knew her Milton Friedman well enough to understand the concept of dispersed costs and concentrated gains. If you promise to disband a particular bureaucracy, you will alienate its employees without winning commensurate thanks from the taxpayers whose burden you would ease.

via What David Cameron can learn from Margaret Thatcher – Telegraph Blogs.

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