America Thinker | Bruce Walker | June 9, 2009
Conservatives can take heart from the crushing blow that taxes and spenders received in the California election. Six propositions were on the ballot in May. All six passed the California Legislature easily. Republicans in the legislature generally opposed them. The five supported by the Left were defeated by huge landslides. Four of those five were defeated in every single county in California (the fifth barely carried the San Francisco area.) The proposition to limit legislative salaries while the state ran a deficit, however, carried every county in California and won 75% of the vote across the state.
Was this a victory for conservatives? It was in this sense: It was a crushing defeat of the Left. Other elections in May brought more gloomy news for the Left and enemies of the West. India held elections in mid-May. Polls showed that the Left might well win control of the Indian Government. Instead, the ruling Congress Party won a sweeping victory, which is very good news for the United States. At the same time, the Kuwaiti people were casting votes for their parliament. The big story was that four women were elected to the parliament, two of whom were educated in America – and they were elected by an overwhelmingly male electorate. The lesser story was that non-religious political parties – political parties that look more like what a party in Holland or Canada would look like – finally gained a majority in the Kuwaiti Parliament. Western pluralism is taking root in the most Islamic parts of the world. It is taking place because of America.
June brought even more terrible news for the Left. England held regional elections. The Labour Party government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown is bland, staid Leftism. An example of its almost casual Leftism was the decision of the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith to include conservative talk show host Michael Savage on a list of the twenty-two undesirables too hateful to enter the United Kingdom. The minister responsible for that Orwellian action is out of the cabinet now (though more because her husband charged his personal porn purchases as a government expense.)
The Labour Party, in many ways, is the oldest Leftist party in the world. It is certainly one of the most significant. Under the sunny smile and glib words of Tony Blair, Labour did pretty well. But not now. The government of Great Britain is in free fall. The Labour Party has the confidence of practically no one.
Polls for the last several years have shown that if the general election were held today, the Labour Party would be swept from power. It is even conceivable that Labour, after the next election, will be only the third largest party in the House of Commons. The mere fact that Brown has not called a general election, when practically no one believes in his ability to govern, is a disgrace to the parliamentary system.
Another disgrace – a big one – popped up a few weeks before the June 5, 2009 elections. Members of Parliament were caught in the same sort of personal abuse of the government parliamentary administration that the United States House of Representatives was caught doing twenty years ago in the House Banking Scandal. Labour Party members sinned, but so did Conservative MPs and others. How would the British people react?
The results were breathtaking in their scope. The Conservative Party, which already controlled most of the local councils in England, gained control of seven more local councils. Tories won 30 of the 34 councils up for election.
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What happened in Britain happened across Europe. Angela Merkel in the September 2009 election appeared certain to be able to form a Right-Center government with its Free Democrat Party, and end the Right-Left coalition government she heads now. Every poll for several years has shown that result. State elections in Hesse earlier this year showed that. Now, the European Parliament elections show that too. The Social Democrats, the primary party of the German Left, received an historically low 21% of the vote.
Across the width and breadth of Europe, the more conservative political parties were drubbing the parties of the Left. It means in a few months, every major nation in Europe will have a political party of the Right in power. Europe is not having a Reagan Revolution or even a Thatcher Revolution. But Europe is giving the Left an F- on its electoral report card,
Does the smashing victory of the Conservative Party, and these other victories mean that the democratic world is suddenly embracing our conservative principles? No: not at all. But does it mean that voters, almost everywhere they can vote, are rejecting the message of the Left? Yes. Real conservatism is not winning elections yet; but the Left is clearly losing.
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