If you enjoy the content at iBankCoin, please follow us on TwitterMADRID (AP) — Throw a dart at a map of Europe now and it takes expert aim to hit a country run by a left-of-center government, especially after Spain’s Socialists were emphatically drubbed out of power over the weekend.
Although the shift to the right began years ago in such heavyweights as France and Germany, it is now all but complete three years into the continent’s grinding debt and economic crisis. Why? When times get tough — when “the cows get thin” as the Spanish say — political experts say edgy voters seek comfort with conservatives.
“The center-right is the natural preference in times of crisis,” said Piotr Kaczynski of the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels. “If you look at societies and how they make their preferences, they all tend to vote more conservative in times of crisis and more center-left in times of economic progress.”
Granted, on the European Union map there are scattered spots of leftist liberalism. A new Social Democratic government runs Denmark, there is a center left government in Norway and there is a broad Social Democratic-led coalition in Austria. And the Socialists might beat conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy in France’s presidential election next year.
Joined Nov 11, 2007
31,929 Blog Posts
Politicians are loved until they run out of other people’s money. Raise the debt limit!
The leftists made social promises they couldn’t keep… It’s nothing new. History repeats. There’s a reason socialism never “sticks”. someone has to be able to fund all the promises made to all, and no one wants to work for “the rest” of society. It’s a good idea until eventually it’s not, and even when they make plans that seem to be possible to fund (which they never do) eventually they have to come up with some scheme to keep it going and find a way to deliver more to the voters until everyone’s broke.
When I say socialism I mean social promises that can’t be kept. We really need less general words than “socialism” and “capitalism”