Comparison To Clinton Is Dismissed - washingtonpost.com Tom Ingram, who was an adviser to Fred D. Thompson's 1994 Senate campaign and has talked to him about a potential 2008 presidential run, said that he thought the Royal race might be good for Republicans, but not because of gender or any similarity Royal had to Clinton.

“It looked to me like more a change-versus-status-quo campaign, and I think that’s interesting, since the change candidate was of the same party as the outgoing president, which is a little odd,” Ingram said. “Maybe that’s good news for Republicans.”

If anyone needed any more confirmation of the power of the metaphor drive we seem to have as both individuals and interacting members of our language sanctioning group, they could ask nothing more than this.

It is not surprising that Hilary Clinton needs to evoke images of women leaders (which is what the article is about) but for Republican males to look to France as an example is truly staggering. In this case, it is not to point out easy parallels (existing woman leader/future woman leader) but rather a correspondence between abstract relationships that requires a lot more real world-knowledge to parse.