Many conservatives look at their first chance to defeat the left in six years when nervous Democrats try to explain away Obama’s disastrous leftward lurch. The left is not only looking at a big defeat in America in two months, it has been getting slobber-knocked all over the modern industrialized world.
Five months ago, in the British General Election, the Labour Party, which had been in power since the early 1990s, suffered a devastating defeat, losing 91 seats in the House of Commons. Although David Cameron’s Conservative Party had to form a coalition with the yuppyish Liberal Party, Conservatives are still the senior party in this government and Cameron resonates well with British voters.
Last September, Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrat Party soundly trounced the Social Democrats, and the Christian Democrats’ traditional coalition ally, the Free Democrats, gained enough support so that Merkel could end the “grand coalition” of her center-right party with the socialist SDP and form a more natural governing alliance with the Free Democrats.
In October 2008, shortly before Obama would win the White House, the Conservative Party in Canada substantially increased its strength in the Canadian Parliament. Stephen Harper almost gained enough votes to govern outright with no support from any of the other major parties. The “Grits,” or Liberal Party, his principal ideological opponents, suffered massive losses (that party went from almost equality with the Conservative Party to having barely half as many seats as the Conservatives.)
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