I think its a given, that Thatcher was a nutcase. She surrounded herself with sycophants and did immense damage to her own party by rejecting advice from all the people of real ability within that party.

Anyone who felt the effect of her ultra right wing policies in education knew damn well they were dealing with an idiot. Of her Education Secretaries only John Macregor had big enough cojones to tell her that she and keith Joseph were bonkers. Macregor got shuffled off to Northern Ireland where I don't think she cared much what happened.

What worries me about Palin is that, like Thatcher, her supporters really don't give tinkers turd about the fact that she's.....well worrying. They forgive her everything. All the daft things. All the insane things. All the inhumane things. All the indifference to human suffering.   All the lack of empathy for anyone with a different point of view - something which intelligence demands for normal folks to live around other folks.

America should take warning from the parable of Margaret Thatcher. We had a mining industry, a mining components industry, a big steel industry, a motorbike industry, an English car industry, no beggars on the street, no major drugs problems, an honest way of counting the unemployed, we had remedial departments in all our schools trying to get to grips with illiteracy (which is a great social evil in England), large mental hospitals to house the human time bombs abd keep them off the streets   - before her first five years of power.

All that is needed for evil to triumph is for otherwise sensible people to say - well I voted for that - but I take no responsibility for it. Palin and her supporters wont take responsibility - just as you can see from the sophistry in this thread that Thatchers supporters take no responsibility for any of the irreversible damage done to our country.