…that I, a young liberal who believed in the left in my adolescent way (but was starting to sour on Jimmy Carter) was mortified that Margaret Thatcher had become the Prime Minister in the UK.

And then came Reagan.

Now, I don’t believe history repeats.  But after a couple of years when Europe has moved to the right with elections in Germany, France and Italy showing a center-right swing (by Euro standards, naturally), and a likely big conservative pickup in the next elections in the UK, it’s good to see the trend picking up speed across the continent:

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.Some right-leaning parties said the results vindicated their reluctance to spend more on company bailouts and fiscal stimulus amid the global economic crisis.

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.

Of course, there are no real parallels with the seventies just yet; America was ready to come out of the miasma of post-Vietnam trauma, Watergate and stagflation when Reagan came on the scene; I don’t know that America’s really woken up to the hangover from it’s last electoral tantrum yet.

But give it time.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Monday, June 8th, 2009 at 6:50 am and is filed under Conservatism, Western Civilization, World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.