|
jadedragon
Administrator
Canada
3788 Posts |
 Posted - 10/31/2009 : 00:55:07
|
The unstoppable descent of the left
Battered and bruised, the left has limped exhausted off the fields of combat in most elections around the world, very lucky to be vertical
Neil Reynolds,
The Globe and Mail, Last updated on Friday, Oct. 30, 2009 6:22AM EDT
With the market meltdown last year, progressive minds anticipated a decisive global turn to the left. It didn't happen. Instead, the European electorate turned conservative and the American electorate turned cranky. If leftward change were easy, President Barack Obama ruefully observed, someone else would have already done it.
By mid-summer, the Gallup Poll measured the growing American resistance to Mr. Obama's changes: By a wide margin, more Americans identified themselves as conservatives (40 per cent) than as liberals (20 per cent), a significant increase since they entrusted two branches of the federal government to Democrats only a year ago. The Canadian electorate has moved right, too - this time rather convincingly.
For some reason, battered and bruised, the left has limped exhausted off the fields of combat in elections this time round, very lucky to be vertical. When Britain's conservatives sweep to victory next year, as everyone now expects, they will complete the rout. The political consequences could be profound. With the current set of European elections coming to a close, the ascendant conservative majority can expect to hold power - at a minimum - for the next four years.
This reversal of left-wing fortune was most dramatically confirmed in Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative coalition officially assumed power yesterday - restoring the legendary postwar coalition of chancellor Konrad Adenauer (Christian Democratic Union and Free Democratic Party) that presided over Germany's miraculous rise from the ashes following the Second World War. Ms. Merkel's coalition, with 48.1 per cent of the national vote, proposes tax cuts of $36-billion (U.S.) a year, rather than more government spending, to stimulate the economy, an encouraging beginning.
Several other European countries moved significantly right as well, including Denmark, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Austria. France remained emphatically conservative, its socialist opposition parties obliterated; Italy remained nominally conservative despite improvident leadership.
Even in the countries that returned socialist governments, such as Portugal, the conservative tilt was instructive. The governing Socialist Party campaigned for huge increases in public spending. Prime Minister Jose Socrates promised (among other things) a new airport for Lisbon and a bullet train to Spain (a country where conservatives crushed their socialist opponents in mid-summer elections for the European Parliament). This high bidding for votes notwithstanding, the socialists lost 24 seats, falling from 121 seats to 97 and ending as a minority government without support from any of the country's other parties.
Portugal's Social Democratic Party, now the principal opposition party, is not a social democratic party at all but rather a centre-right conservative party. It campaigned for comparably huge cuts in public spending and in taxes. Party leader Manuela Ferreira Leite pulled no punches: She compared herself (favourably) to Margaret Thatcher. This honesty apparently didn't hurt. The party gained six seats. Another conservative party gained seven.
Although unique in its ideological eccentricity, Portugal's Social Democratic Party helps solve the mystery of the disintegrating left. Founded in 1974 as an orthodox party of the centre-left, the Social Democrats formed a minority government in 1985 - and proceeded to govern as a party of the centre-right. Its tax cuts proved wildly popular; in 1987, the party won the largest landslide in Portuguese electoral history. Given its successes, it's obvious why this Social Democratic Party governed - and now campaigns - from the right.
Britain's Labour Party made the same transition. When Tony Blair took office in 1997, Labour was still encumbered in ideological impedimenta. When he stepped down in 2007, it was essentially indistinguishable from the Conservative Party. In retirement, Mr. Blair took a part-time position as a special adviser to JPMorgan Chase, the investment bank, at an annual salary (reportedly) in excess of £500,000 ($880,000 Canadian). "I have always been interested in commerce," Mr. Blair told the Financial Times. And a good thing, too.
You can't tell from any political party's campaign slogans how it will govern. Survival tends to trump ideology. Yet the elections of 2009 document a rare unanimity, except for the puzzling American anomaly, in the advanced democracies. The question of the moment is how long this curious anomalous exception will last.
Though indirectly, Mr. Obama now faces the first electoral test of his administration. Two states important to his presidency elect governors next week. The elections in Virginia and New Jersey have national significance. In Virginia, the polling company Rasmussen says, 57 per cent of voters regard their decisions, in part, as proxy ballots on the left-tilting President and the left-tilting Congress that sustains him. In its polling this week, Rasmussen put the two Republican candidates ahead in both states - marginally in New Jersey (three percentage points), more convincingly in Virginia (six points).
This is why Mr. Obama spent most of this week on the stump - to save his administration from the conservative insurgency that has swept much of the world.
=========================================
|
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” – George Bernard Shaw.
Why Copper Bullion ~~~ Interview with Silver Bullion Producer Market Harmony
Passive Income blog |
|
The unstoppable descent of the left
Forum Locked
Posted - 11/02/2009 : 19:33:35
