Europe Goes Right As Democrats Try Their Failed Ideas

By BENNY AVNI, Special to the Sun | November 2, 2019

As America’s Democratic presidential candidates promote programs borrowed from Europe’s traditional left, Europeans are increasingly pushing back against them.

Following an election last Sunday in Germany’s Thuringia state, members of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic party accused the chancellor (in power since 2005) of dragging the party too far leftward, blaming her for the loss to the far-right Alternative for Germany party. A top contender for the Christian Democratic leadership, Friedrich Merz, called on Frau Merkel to resign now, rather than wait for 2021, when she plans to retire.

In the European Parliament election in May, France’s National Rally party handsomely beat President Macron’s centrist faction. Formerly known as the National Front, the current right-most French party is dominated by Marine Le Pen, whose father and party founder, Jean-Marie, was a Holocaust denier. Now Madame Le Pen’s party concentrates on conservatism and retail politics, and its increasingly seen as a formidable challenger to Monsieur Macron, whose poll numbers, despite a recent uptick, remain low.

In Poland, Hungary and Italy, to name a few, politicians of various right-wing parties are now in power, while anti-leftists, including some ugly and racist ones, are on the rise. Meanwhile, in Canada, another perceived utopia among progressives, a former golden boy, Prime Minister Trudeau, is striving to stay in power after his Liberal party suffered parliamentary seat losses in the October 21 election.

One of the major reasons for Mr. Trudeau’s setback was his environment-friendly campaign, highlighting strategies to combat climate change. While restricting reliance on fossil fuels is popular in Canada’s urban east, its oil-drilling Western provinces voted against the Liberals in droves, opting for the right instead.

Then there’s the United Kingdom, which this week decided to conduct a national election on December 12. Britons have had it up to their stiff upper lips with Brexit talk. Yet, while smart Londoners belittle the flamboyant Conservative prime minister, Boris Johnson, polls show that even Euro-remainers may hold their noses and vote to keep him in power.

Why? Mr. Johnson’s top rival, Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, is widely seen as the Ghost of Leftwings Past, a throwback to an era when British intellectuals idolized the Soviet Union and other enemies of the West. If Mr. Corbyn wins, it won’t be on the strength of his socialist ideas or his obsession with Jews and Israel, but despite them.

So what drives Europe’s right turn? A pushback against the continent’s migration policies is a common explanation and it certainly is a reason — but far from the only one. It’s the economy, stupid.

While the newly minted front-runner for the Democratic Party, Elizabeth Warren, says wealth taxes will finance all her “I have a plan for that” ideas, Europe has tried, and largely dismissed, that scheme. Of the dozen countries that have levied taxes on the ultra-rich, all but three repealed them: Promised government revenues never materialized, and the well-to-do found ways to exploit loopholes or, worse, moved out of the country to escape confiscatory taxes.

Meanwhile, in March, our former United Nations ambassador, Nikki Haley, took to Twitter to challenge another Democratic front-runner, Senator Sanders, for lavishing praise on Finland’s health-care system. “Comparing us to Finland is ridiculous,” Governor Haley wrote, as a chorus of fact-checkers — and Finland’s ambassador to the United Nations, Kai Sauer — rushed to Bernie’s defense.

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