ANGLOSPHERIC SAMENESS:

Abbott is cast in the mold of the great conservative leaders -- Thatcher, Reagan, and his political mentor and predecessor in Australia John Howard. He is super-fit, a boxer (with an unbroken nose), and a former Rhodes Scholar. Modestly paralleling the young summer lifeguard Ronald Reagan, he saved lives at some risk to his own on two occasions (without staying around to be thanked). He is also, at 55, relatively young. He has studied Law and has been a professional journalist, writing for Australia's highest-quality publications, including the old Bulletin and the Murdoch-owned National daily, the Australian.

He has never hesitated to espouse causes that send the left into a mouth-frothing rage. He studied for a time at a Catholic seminary, was a leading light in Australians for Constitutional Monarchy (playing a major role in defeating the left-inspired push for a republic), and highly skeptical about global warming and climate change. He resigned from the Liberal front bench in 2009, over then-leader Malcolm Turnbull's support for Labor's emissions trading scheme.

He can be expected to undo Labor's irrational and employment-destroying "carbon tax" and its even crazier tax on mining (mining being Australia's chief source of wealth). It seems likely that he will rebuild Australia's dangerously diminished defense forces. He has given notice that he will not increase foreign aid, though it would be better for all parties if he cut it down to nothing but disaster relief.

He is personally opposed to abortion although he did not attempt to ban it when Minister for Health in the Howard Government. A ludicrous attempt to paint him as a misogynist by the previous Labor leader and Prime Minister Julia Gillard was rightly laughed to scorn. He has taken over a disunited and demoralized Liberal Party, unified it, and led it to a crushing victory. As Melanie Phillips put it: "He has faced down the intellectual thuggery and demonization by the Left."

Although the left have attacked Abbott with a full battery of slanders, including the nickname "The mad monk" and a ludicrous charge that as a student he once punched a wall near a feminist student politician, no one has been able to credibly suggest that he lacks integrity. In the words of Mark Steyn: "We're not talking about a Cameronesque trimmer and opportunist here."

As his championship of ACM indicated, Abbott is orientated towards the political values of Churchill and the Anglosphere (Britain, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand all now have leaders to the right of Obama, though in the case of Britain the difference is fairly minuscule).

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