If This Were Britain ...

Dave Weigel recalls these famous moments in British politics, when prime minister John Major was unable to corral enough of his own party to support his own policy. Blair - then leader of the opposition - pounced. The bottom line of today, however they try to spin it, is that a Republican president failed to win more than a third of his own party in the House in what most regard as a financial emergency. The collapse of the Republican party as a coherent organization is pretty much complete - and it's silly to blame Nancy Pelosi. Bush's Republicans increasingly remind me of Major's Tories, avant le deluge: