European parliament elections are taking place, and there’s some interesting goings-on over there.
Tax and spend, big government lefties are getting slapped around pretty hard.
Conservatives raced toward victory in some of Europe‘s largest economies Sunday as initial results and exit polls showed voters punishing left-leaning parties in European parliament elections in France, Germany and elsewhere.
First projections by the European Union showed center-right parties would have the most seats — between 263 and 273 — in the 736-member parliament. Center-left parties were expected to get between 155 to 165 seats.
Germany’s Social Democrats headed to their worst showing in a nationwide election since World War II.
So what’s up here? A blip? Perhaps. A few years of conservative scandals or budget cuts or whatnot may swing things back toward the socialists over there, but you’ve got to think that a lot of this is in response to chickens coming home to roost. Spending money willy-nilly is all groovy when the economy is chugging along, but when there’s a substantial downturn, people get miffed when they’re told they have to continue working hard to support others’ bad habits.
The Europeans are experiencing essentially what we are in this country, only worse. Bloated government, bloated welfare rolls, bloated budgets… but shrinking paychecks and patience. Some seem to think it’s the beginning of the end for rampant socialism in Europe.
Graham Watson, leader of the EU’s center-right Liberal Democrat grouping, said early results suggested a rejection of the Socialist approach.
“People don’t want a return to socialism and that’s why the majority here will be a center-right majority,” he said.
Perhaps. I’d hope so. Eventually somethings got to give. Governments cannot continually raise taxes on workers and increase handouts to a larger and larger percentage of people on the dole. A tyranny enforced through barbed-wire and machines guns might be able to sustain that for a longer period, like the Soviet Union, but how long can a democracy continue down that path? Eventually your economy is unable to bear the weight of the unproductives and things start to fall apart. Are we at that point in Europe now? Or do they still have a few more decades of voting themselves into national bankruptcy?
We’ll see. But this is an encouraging sign.
Now… if only we could put the brakes on it in our own country.
And where’s the intrepid reporter willing to stand up and ask President Obama why he believes these same policies will work here when they’re being shown the door in Europe?
Oh, never mind. You’d need something like… what’s that now? A media… a press corps… something like that I think it’s called. I’ve forgotten.
