Juliet Lapidos: Thatcher -- The G.O.P.’s Favorite Foreigner

Juliet Lapidos is a staff editor with the NYT editorial board.

Margaret Thatcher, who died Monday morning at 87, was American conservatives’ favorite foreigner.

When Sarah Palin traveled to London she requested a meeting with the former prime minister. (That Mrs. Thatcher declined, reportedly because her aides found the prospect of such an encounter “belittling,” is another matter.) In advance of the Republican primaries, Newt Gingrich showed his deep respect for Mrs. Thatcher by comparing himself to her. “Because I am much like Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, I’m such an unconventional political figure.”

Her status as a right-wing icon, a hero of modern conservatism almost on par with Reagan, shows no sign of declining with her death. Republican House Speaker John Boehner said earlier today that she was the “greatest peacetime prime minister in British history.” And Representative Steve Stockman, Republican of Texas, released a statement praising Mrs. Thatcher for taking “a sledgehammer to the machinery of liberalism.”...