Posted on 11/21/2011 2:23:36 PM PST by johnatures
COMMENTARY | The Spanish conservatives won a decisive election Sunday, ousting the ruling Spanish Socialists. Could something similar happen in America in the 2012 election?
There are some striking similarities between the Spanish case and the American situation. The party in charge was blamed for the economic turmoil wracking the country. And the conservative Popular Party has been promoting change.
There are even more similarities between Popular Party leader Mariano Rajoy and the likely Republican nominee, Mitt Romney. And those similarities are more than just the initials "M.R." Rajoy has run before for office, like Romney. Rajoy is like Romney in that both rarely provide more than vague ideas on taxes and spending cuts. Both are relatively bland, struggle somewhat with providing a personal touch and adopt strategies of "flexibility." In other words, Spain picked a pragmatist instead of an ideologue and settled for flavorless over flamboyant.
That's what Republicans are doing by seriously considering picking Romney to lead the party. It should be comforting to the GOP that a Romneyesque candidate can win
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
European “conservatives” are usually far to the left of our conservatives.
The article starts out with some major wrong premises.
The “right” in Spain is very likely, very far from the “right” in the U.S., where, in many European countries, the “right” are simply moderate liberals.
Secondly, Romney WON’T be the republican nominee. No right thinking republican will ever go with Romney, otherwise, they’d be going with a moderate liberal, or someone like a “moderate Obama”.
My first thought upon hearing the news, but I'm hoping Spain might be an exception. Plus, there is always that heading in the right direction thing.
Republicans hope?....I’m guessing the author missed that little Congressional ass-whopping last year.....
European conservatives have to start from where they are, which is a fully developed quasi-socialist (and sometimes not so quasi) welfare state. They certainly can’t be as radical in economic terms as ours might be, but they generally support a recognizably pro-Western, conservative social agenda, something that going to be of great help to the Spanish, whose traditional values and society has been under violent attack by Zapatero and PSOE ever since the moment he got into power.
Aznar did a lot to liberalize things like employment (no more required lifetime contracts for employees!), the requirements for establishing a business, competition, etc. Of course, ZP undid as much as he could, but I would imagine these will be some of the things that the conservatives will try to bring back.
And the Spanish will no longer have to feel so defensive about being Spanish anymore - believe it or not, the very concept of Spain was one of the things ZP attacked. Sounds kind of familiar, right?
I guess that means McCain wasn't the nominee last time around ...
My response to your title:
I hope so.
Well, in Spain right wing people call Obama “just an American Zapatero” and in America I’ve heard calling Zapatero “just as our Obama”, so...
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