Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican Party presidential hopeful, appears on NBC's Meet the Press, January 22

Newt Gingrich’s huge win in the Republican primary election in South Carolina on Saturday may have had less to do with the former House speaker’s popularity and everything to do with conservatives’ resentment of their presumptive nominee, Mitt Romney.

On CBS News’ Face the Nation on Sunday, Gingrich suggested that Romney lost votes in South Carolina when “people began to realize that he’d been pro-choice, pro-gun control and pro-tax increase” as a governor in the northeastern state of Massachusetts between 2003 and 2007.

Romney has defended his record by pointing out that he had to work with a Democratic legislature in Massachusetts and claimed that he changed his position on abortion when he was confronted with the issue of stem cell research. As a result, he was nevertheless “way to the left of South Carolinians,” as Gingrich put it.

It’s not just that Romney is perceived as a moderate; he has failed to enthuse Republican activists for an election that many of them regard as historic. As former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour put it on Face the Nation, “Romney’s strengths are more managerial.” Gingrich, by contrast, is able to rally people with his ability to clearly and concisely articulate conservative beliefs and positions.

Gingrich described himself as a “populist conservative” on NBC’ Meet the Press and said that what “nobody in Washington or New York gets is the level of anger at the national establishment. People who are just sick and tired of being told what they’re allowed to think, what they’re allowed to say.”

This reiterated the argument that Gingrich made in his victory speech in South Carolina on Saturday night where he suggested that “the elites in Washington and New York have no understanding, no care, no concern” for ordinary Americans.

The American people feel that they have elites that been trying for a half century to force us to quit being American.

This sort of rhetoric tends to resonate with right wing voters who resent what they perceive as government overreach and an Obama Administration that Gingrich said last night has been a “disaster.”

It’s why conservative RedState blogger Erick Erickson observed that people were flocking to Gingrich not so much because they liked him but because they were “looking for a vessel to channel their anger with Obama and their complete disappointment with the GOP establishment which is now embodied perfectly by Romney.”

Former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough, now an MSNBC morning show host, insisted that Gingrich wasn’t even a conservative. “He uses this resentment to actually hide a record,” he said on Meet the Press; a record that is far from reactionary and fairly similar to Mitt Romney’s. Both previously supported an individual health insurance mandate and both previously supported emission trade legislation. Neither is particularly popular with the conservative base anymore.

The Republican establishment in Washington gave us $5 trillion of debt during the Bush era. They took a $155 billion surplus and turned it into a $1 trillion deficit. They engaged in radical foreign policy, Wilsonian foreign policy. George Bush promising to end tyranny across the globe. The conservative moment is saying “no,” stop.

“Gingrich is not going to be our final choice,” Scarborough predicted. “But we’re not handing this off to Mitt Romney right now.”

Republican senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina appears on Fox News' Hannity, January 13

South Carolina senator Jim DeMint on Friday cautioned his fellow Republicans against ignoring the Ron Paul vote in their party’s presidential primary elections. “If Republicans don’t figure out how to listen to and understand some of the things he’s saying,” he told Fox News’ Hannity, it could break up the party.

Conservatives worry about a third party run by Paul because it could split the right wing vote and enable President Barack Obama to win reelection in November.

Unlike previous primary contests, when Paul rarely won more than 10 percent of the vote, in Iowa and New Hampshire this month, he won more than 20 percent each time. Voters registered as independents were able to participate in both elections and Paul did especially well among them and voters under the age of twenty-nine. In both Iowa and New Hampshire, Paul won half the youth vote and in the latter, a third of self declared independents.

Among first time voters, too, Paul’s limited government and antiwar rhetoric resonated but it’s anathema to many social conservatives and defense hawks who reject the Texas congressman’s candidacy as having no bearing on the party’s future. DeMint didn’t share that view on Friday. “The whole debate within the Republican Party needs to be between conservatives and libertarians,” he said.

Paul’s used to be mainstream conservatism in the United States. The Republican Party abandoned its noninterventionism in the wake of World War II while its emphasis on individual liberty eroded as a consequence of the religious revival of the 1980s which prompted even once presidential candidate and Arizona senator Barry Goldwater, whose views on the proper role of government were similar to Paul’s, to lament his party’s reactionary positions on cultural issues as abortion and gay rights.

Representative of the religious right in today’s primary race is former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum who rivaled frontrunner Mitt Romney for a first place finish in Iowa and who hopes to do well in South Carolina’s primary next week.

Santorum told National Public Radio in 2006 quite frankly that most conservatives do not embrace the notion of personal autonomy anymore. “Some do,” he admitted. “They have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, government should keep our taxes down and keep our regulations low, that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues. You know, people should do whatever they want.”

Although Paul is opposed to abortion rights, his views on drug legislation, education policy and marriage are far outside the mainstream of Republican thought. According to Santorum, it is “not how traditional conservatives view the world.”

I think most conservatives understand that individuals can’t go it alone. That there is no such society that I am aware of, where we’ve had radical individualism and that it succeeds as a culture.

Goldwater would beg to differ. So does between 5 and 7 percent of voters nationwide if Paul were to run as an independent in November’s presidential election.

At least 80 percent of his support as a third party candidate would come at the expense of the Republican ticket. States like Florida, Indiana, North Carolina and Virginia, which were carried by George W. Bush in 2004 but won by Obama in 2008, could all go for the Democrat if Paul acts as a “spoiler” on the right. Together they wield sixty-eight electoral votes which could tilt the balance in the president’s favor. So if only for electoral reasons, Republicans ought to take notice of Paul’s mounting popularity.

Former Massachusetts governor and Republican Party presidential hopeful Mitt Romney after a rally in Paradise Valley, Arizona, December 6 (Gage Skidmore)

Mitt Romney seems poised to secure the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. The former Massachusetts governor has seen most of his rivals’ campaigns implode around him but few American conservatives are warming up to the prospect of a Romney candidacy.

The latest conservative darling, Newt Gingrich, who was Speaker of the House of Representatives during the 1990s, isn’t likely to be nominated. Married thrice and prone to making bombastic pronouncements about his leadership capacities, social conservatives mistrust him and centrist voters would probably not prefer him over Barack Obama in a general election. They remember his tumultuous speakership when the Republicans’ intransigence forced a Federal Government shutdown in 1995 and 1996.

Gingrich’s newfound popularity follows former businessman Herman Cain’s demise in the polls as he struggles with allegations of sexual harassment. His surge was anticipated by the spectacular rise and fall of Texas governor Rick Perry who had been hailed as the right’s redeemer only to disappoint in the candidates’ debates. Last month, he failed to remember one of the three departments of government he would like to dismantle on live television—a painful moment for Perry who has to transcend his cowboy image if he is to be nominated.

Perry’s “brain freeze” notwithstanding, he’s not out of the running altogether. The conservative base of the Republican Party is desperately looking for an alternative to Romney while the first primary contest is less than a month away.

The heir presumptive to the nomination, who was considered a frontrunner for the 2008 election but lost the primary race against John McCain, hasn’t managed to enthuse party activists with his managerial style and finely tuned debate performances. What’s more, they aren’t too sure about Romney’s convictions.

Romney, who governed in the liberal state of Massachusetts before he ran for his party’s presidential nomination, declared himself in favor of abortion rights before he became pro-life. He was in favor of gun control before he wasn’t. And in Massachusetts, he enacted a health care reform scheme that included a mandate that people buy insurance—the very tenet of President Obama’s health reform legislation which conservatives so staunchly opposed.

Creating jobs and reviving the American economy may be the most important themes of the November election but committed conservatives aren’t quick to forgive Romney for the moderate positions he has held in the past.

Recently, he’s tried a more populist approach—advocating military action against Iran and enacting punitive tariffs against China—but Romney isn’t advancing in the polls. During the 2008 primary contest, he never managed to win more than roughly 25 percent of the Republican vote nationwide. He’s struggled to maintain his lead at over 20 percent during the current election cycle.

Even in one on one polls, when he is pitted against fringe candidates like Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul, who stand no chance of winning a general election, half of the Republican electorate won’t vote for Mitt Romney. These are several tens of millions of conservative Americans who prefer any candidate over their frontrunner. They are a force to be reckoned with.

Romney is unlikely to do well in Iowa where right wing voters tend to be more conservative than in most of the rest of the United States. The January caucuses will probably be won by one of the social conservatives in the race. Romney isn’t even campaigning there. He could do well in the first primary election in New Hampshire where Republicans are more centrist and independents are allowed to vote as well but he will probably lose in South Carolina which is, again, a very conservative state.

If, by the time of the South Carolina primary late in January, the conservative base of the Republican Party has coalesced around a single candidate like Rick Perry, who has the most extended campaign besides Romney’s and an impressive war chest to finance radio and television commercials, Romney could be hard pressed to retain his lead in Florida and Nevada, the fourth and fifth primary states respectively, where he now maintains narrow leads in the polls.

Even in Florida, which is home to millions of retirees who are skeptical of Herman Cain’s and Rick Perry’s plans for pension privatization, Romney hasn’t been able to boost his popularity north of 25 percent.

Although conservatives aren’t warming up to Romney, they are adjusting to the probability of his candidacy. More than half of likely Republican voters expect that he will be the nominee even if they don’t want him to be.

Party heavyweights like New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who had been encouraged by conservative opinion leaders to run for the nomination but declined, as well as his former rival Tim Pawlenty, who dropped out of the race when his poll numbers wouldn’t approve, have thrown their support behind Romney, adding to the aura of inevitability that his campaign has tried to foster.

It would be ironic and quite possibly a disappointment for the Republican Party to settle on a traditional, pro-business candidate like Romney after the Tea Party rebellion of 2010 helped Republicans regain their majority in the House of Representatives.

The conservative “revolution” that swept not just Washington but dozens of states where Republican legislatures and governorships turned red again after the Democratic victory wave of 2008 could extinguish with a Romney candidacy. He may appeal to the center but he isn’t liked on the right. If this translates into a lack of grassroots activism and volunteer campaigning for him in November of next year, when America’s economic prospects may have slowly started to improve, it could even cost Romney the general election.

Patrick Buchanan on Fox News' Hannity, October 18

Will tribalism trump globalism? That’s the bigger ideological struggle that can be derived from Patrick Buchanan’s latest book, Suicide of a Superpower, which argues not just that the United States are disintegration but that the whole of Western civilization could dissolve.

The former Republican Party presidential hopeful and political commentator fears a Balkanization of America as the country becomes increasingly secular and people of European descent are dying it. “The death of European Christianity means the disappearance of the European tribe,” he writes, “a prospect visible in the demographic statistics of every Western nation.”

Peoples of European descent are not only in a relative but a real decline. They are aging, dying, disappearing. This is the existential crisis of the West.

Buchanan points out that by 2020, whites over the age of sixty-five are expected to outnumber those aged seventeen and younger. “Deaths will exceed births,” he notes and “Mexico is moving north.”

The demographic shift will exacerbate tension between conservatives and liberals in the country. Whereas immigration increasingly fuels apprehension on the right, the political left has embraced multiculturalism. Buchanan wonders, “What kind of man looks with transcendental joy to a day when the people among whom he was raised have become a minority in a nation where the majority rules?”

Historians will look back in stupor, Buchanan predicts, at twenty-first century Americans “who believed the magnificent republic they inherited would be enriched by bringing in scores of millions from the failed states of the Third World.”

On Fox News’ Hannity Monday night, Buchanan suggested that the left has a political motive for supporting immigration. Minorities, he pointed out, overwhelmingly vote Democratic. Once they constitute half of the electorate, “Republicans will never win another election.”

Ethnic minorities trend Democratic because “they depend on government,” he said. “They believe in government. And they vote for the party of government.” Even if their values are Christian or conservative.

To prevent the stagnation of European culture in America and combat the decline of conservatism, Buchanan advocated a moratorium on immigration. He claimed that after the United States imposed immigration quota in the 1920s, citizens of eastern and southern European descent had time to grow out of poverty. “Once they move into the middle class, into the taxpayer category,” they’ll consider voting for the party of small government, he said.

If, on the other hand, the United States make no effort to stem the tide of immigration and allow a disintegration of American culture, it will give rise to an ethnic nationalism, according to Buchanan who writes in his book that it will inevitably trump globalism.

We may deny the existence of ethnonationalism, detest it, condemn it. But this creator and destroyer of empires and nations is a force infinitely more powerful than globalism, for it engages the heart. Men will die for it. Religion, race, culture and tribe are the four horsemen of the coming apocalypse.

Buchanan’s moratorium on immigration represents half of his isolationism. Protectionism is the other half. These may seem appropriate steps to take for a country if indeed modern tribalism is more powerful a motivator for people than the economic benefit that is derived from globalization. But is this true when a person’s self interest collides with his “tribal” affiliation, whether it’s race or religion or politics?

Globalization is an unstoppable force because free trade is demonstrably more advantageous to a country than is protectionism; because open markets are demonstrably more prosperous than closed ones. Countries that turn inward tend to lose business whereas countries that engage in competition instead of trying to cheat others blossom.

The globalized world of the early twenty-first century is testament to the success of American superpower. Without its military superiority, which ensured a predictable balance of power, and proven economic model of success, other nations either could nor or would not have become part of it.

There is, however, in every country, even America, a class that’s unable to keep up with the highly competitive and demanding flexibility of being part of a global labor market. There is an even larger group of people in every country that doesn’t recognize the tremendous benefits of globalization even if they’re able to buy cheap products made in China.

These people depend on a model of government, the welfare state, that’s bankrupt. It’s a model that Buchanan, a small government conservative, has never endorsed. If he wants to kill it, he shouldn’t champion isolationism, which would allow people to continue to believe for probably a longer period of time that it’s a sustainable model; he should embrace globalism as the destroyer of the big government that he has always rallied against.

Schweriner Schloss, the seat of the state parliament of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, October 6, 2006

Germany’s ruling conservative and liberal parties suffered major defeats in regional elections this weekend. The loss is the latest in a series of setbacks for the country’s right wing governing parties.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s christian democrats, the largest federal party, secured just 23 percent of the vote in northeast Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, down from 28.8 percent in 2006. The social democratic SPD surged from 30.2 to 35.7 percent while the opposition Greens also made gains.

The Free Democrat Party, Merkel’s coalition partner in Berlin, didn’t make the election threshold. Die Linke won 18.4 percent of the vote. The far left is traditionally popular in former East Germany.

Many conservative Germans feel that they have shouldered their fair share of the burden of bailing out the rest of Europe. The chancellor’s involvement in the financial rescue operations of Greece, Ireland and Portugal seems at odds with the values of austerity and prudence she champions at home. Yet the largest opposition parties favor closer European integration than she does.

The right wing FDP is the only occasionally euroskeptic among major German political parties but its base has all but evaporated.

The social democrats and Green party previously won a narrow majority in the southern state of Baden-Württemberg, otherwise a conservative stronghold. Last February, the christian democrats were decimated in local elections in Hamburg where the SPD secured an outright majority—a novelty in coalition heavy German politics.

The liberals and conservatives also suffered losses in the western industrial state of North Rhine-Westphalia last year which robbed their coalition of its upper house majority. According to recent polls, the liberals would receive less than 5 percent of the vote nationwide—a dismal performance after their historic win in 2009 when they claimed 15 percent of the national vote.

The fate of Germany’s liberals reflects a changing European political constellation in which voters are increasingly wary of compromise and drawn to the extremes of the spectrum.

Among the liberal party’s voters, leftists have been disillusioned by their support for spending cuts and found an alternative in the progressive Green party while moderates are attracted to the right where they find conservatives who a “tougher on crime” and share their concerns about immigration from Muslim countries and Eastern Europe. There doesn’t seem to be much room for social liberalism in the middle anymore.

Although social democrats are Greens are coalition partners across German local governments, the SPD may not return to government after federal elections in 2013. All European labor parties are struggling to regain relevance. The unpopularity of Merkel’s conservatives should not be mistaken for a vindication of the opposition party’s economic policy. The SPD hasn’t yet managed to reinvent itself as a broad and centrist platform for reform. Young urban professionals prefer the more cosmopolitan Green party while the christian democrats continue to enjoy broad support among a largely rural and aging constituency.

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda of Japan, then finance minister, in Kyoto, November 5, 2010 (AP)

As Japan changed prime minister this week for the sixth time in as many years, it’s tempting to dismiss the leadership reshuffle as virtually insignificant. Yoshihiko Noda, however, may finally herald the change that his Democratic Party promised to bring to Tokyo when it swept to power two years ago.

In what is interpreted as a sign of the new prime minister’s conservatism, Noda picked a relative lightweight to head his finance department—a key position in his cabinet as Japan copes with a debt twice the size of its $5 trillion economy and an expensive recovery in its northeast which was devastated by an earthquake and tsunami in March.

Without a potential challenger in the finance ministry, Noda can be expected to call the shots himself on economy policy where he believes a balance between fiscal consolidation and pro-growth reform is essential. “We can lose no time in reforming public finances,” he told a news conference after being formally appointed on Friday. “But I’m not putting fiscal reform on top of everything else.”

Noda could push for an increase in the nation’s sale tax which has among the lowest rates in the industrialized world. His predecessor failed to act on a promise to consider it. Naoto Kan, who was also finance minister before he headed the government, did enact tax relief for Japanese business last year in an attempt to boost economic growth.

At 40 percent, Japan’s corporate tax rate was the highest among major economies.

Noda replaced Kan who was generally unpopular and had been discredited by the nuclear power plant accident in Fukushima this spring. He inherits not only a divided parliament but warring factions in his Democratic Party as well.

Noda’s election was a setback for the powerful party chief Ichirō Ozawa who challenged Kan in August of last year after maneuvering him into the finance ministry in the first place. The first Democratic finance minister insisted on fiscal restraint to reduce Japan’s colossal debt. Kan was supposed to be more “flexible” in facilitating the sort of pork barrel spending and nepotism which propelled Ozawa to power.

The man who is often called Japan’s “shadow shogun” because of his enormous sway in Democratic Party politics was instrumental in its 2009 election victory which ended decades of Liberal Democratic Party rule. His tactics have since come under scrutiny however and his prestige has dwindled as evidenced by Noda’s win. Ozawa backed his opponent.

The party elder’s first chosen prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, left office after less than nine months in power amid disappointment over his indecisiveness and incompetence.

Signaling a departure from Liberal Democratic policy, Hatoyama had demanded that the United States move a military base off the island of Okinawa as a demonstration of Japan’s security independence. The Americans, however, stayed put. Hatoyama, who, for all his rhetoric, recognized that Japan was extremely dependent on American protection, resigned in disgrace.

The Okinawa base debacle distracted attention from the real failure of Hatoyama’s cabinet—its unimaginative fiscal policy which offered no change at all from Liberal Democratic orthodoxy.

Before they came to power in 2009, the Democrats vowed to represent “self reliant individuals” and reduce the burdensome scope of Japan’s welfare state in favor of a market driven approach.

Once in government and confronted with a global economic contraction, the party blamed the free market policies of the past for job losses and a widening income gap. It suddenly championed more of the very Keynesian, demand side stimulus which had been implemented by the Liberal Democrats for close to two decades. A record, $1 trillion dollar budget was enacted, full of measures that were designed to soften the impact which the recession had on working Japanese.

The spending spree hugely increased Japan’s indebtedness while recovering from March’s natural disaster will probably require more borrowing on the short term.

It’s too soon to tell whether Noda has the political capital and the will to truly rein in the Japanese state but he says he wants to.

While finance minister, Noda championed a 10 percent spending cut across all departments of Japan’s government and aimed to cap the issuance of new sovereign bonds at half a trillion dollars. The need for fiscal restraint is clearly present as tax income now covers less than half of Japan’s annual budget.

In terms of foreign policy, the new prime minister signals a return to normalcy. He promised to restore the alliance with the United States as the “very foundation” of Japan’s international relations while Chinese editorials have chastised him for identifying rising nationalism and naval power across the East China Sea as potentially hazardous to regional stability.

Western governments have borrowed heavily to finance deficit spending in recent years. Although austerity appears to be in vogue in Europe, even countries that are implementing deep budget cuts are unlikely to achieve balance for at least two more years.

Fiscal consolidation is a short term goal in many European countries nonetheless, especially after financial markets started to worry about the creditworthiness of Italy and Spain last week and drove up their borrowing costs. The European Central Bank intervened with a bond purchasing operation to provide temporary relief but its president Jean-Claude Trichet has warned that “monetary policy responsibility cannot,” in the long term, “substitute for government irresponsibility.” Countries have to slash spending, fast.

France and Italy both announced additional austerity measures last week, including tens of billions of euros in cutbacks. Italy, which is the third largest economy in the eurozone, could be especially vulnerable as its public debt equals some 120 percent of gross domestic product.

In the United States, by contrast, where the national debt almost equals the size of the economy, the administration is reluctant to scale back public investments. Indeed, President Barack Obama and his Democratic Party insist that more stimulus is needed to propel the economy into recovery.

The American Government currently borrows approximately a third of what it spends, amounting to a deficit of nearly 10 percent of GDP. Shortfalls are projected for several more years, necessitating several trillions in spending reductions over the next decade if the country is to achieve balance in the medium term.

Opposition Republicans, who control the lower chamber of Congress, have passed a comprehensive “cut, cap and balance” plan for fiscal consolidation that cuts federal spending immediately, caps it at a certain measure of GDP and legally prohibits future deficit spending with a balanced budget amendment. The Democratic majority in the Senate rejected the proposal as did the president.

“We don’t need a constitutional amendment to do our jobs,” Obama explained last month, which is “to make sure that the government is living within its means.” He has yet to present a credible plan for deficit reduction however. His 2012 budget proposal included just $100 billion in yearly cuts, trillions short of the amount that independent experts and the Congressional Budget Office estimate is necessary to eventually regain balance.

A balanced budget amendments is popular with American voters. Nearly all the states already have such provisions in place.

European politicians are exploring similar methods to force especially countries in the periphery like Greece to rein in spending. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday that they would push other eurozone governments to enshrine deficit limits in their constitutions. Sarkozy advocates such a measure at home although his socialist opposition is skeptical. One leftist presidential contender has suggested that the conservative first aim to achieve his 3 percent deficit target for 2013 before considering constitutional reform.

Germany enacted a balanced budget provision in the wake of the financial crisis in 2009 which limited its government’s yearly ability to borrow to .35 percent of GDP, starting in 2016. From 2020 onward, the German states will not be permitted to run a deficit at all except during emergencies.

The countries most desperately in need of fiscal reform are Greece and Spain where socialists governments have been unable to reduce spending enough to meet the European deficit maximum of 3 percent of GDP. Both had a 10 percent shortfall last year and each had their credit ratings downgraded, stirring market apprehension about the indebtedness of countries like Belgium and Italy which were previously deemed safe. Imposing deficit limits on governments throughout the eurozone should assure investors that countries will not be permitted to continue to pile on debt.

Spanish People's Party leader Mariano Rajoy in parliament, July 27

Spain’s unpopular prime minister called early parliamentary elections last week in the wake of the release of dismal new unemployment figures. José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero won’t stand for reelection and it seems highly unlikely that his socialist party could maintain its present majority. What the opposition conservatives would do to alleviate Spain’s economic crisis remains ambiguous however.

The number of Spanish unemployed fell only slightly last quarter to 21 percent—the worst joblessness rate in the European Union. It may get worse still toward the end of the year when seasonal jobs disappear.

Meanwhile, the specter of Spain’s demise continues to worry Europe. Its creditworthiness was downgraded earlier this year as the government struggles to mend its deficit. Zapatero’s cabinet designed a budget last year that would cut the deficit in half, down to 6 percent of GDP this year. Austerity measures include a 7.7 percent reduction in government spending, a 5 percent pay cut to public sector salaries and an increase in personal income taxes for those earning more than €120,000 euros a year.

The socialist government also promised labor law and pension reforms to boost Spain’s competitiveness but with trade unions marching against austerity and Zapatero’s approval rating down to 25 percent, the left appears to have lost the credibility necessary to enact them.

Former interior minister Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba will lead the socialists into November’s election. Although his party was crushed at regional polls last May, Rubalcaba has begun to eat into the opposition conservatives’ lead. If elections were held today, People’s Party leader Mariano Rajoy would find himself at the helm of a minority government.

Rajoy has announced an economic “shock plan” if elected, anticipating protests and strikes during his first year in office but enough to derail a reform agenda. “The measures will be tough and we will have trouble with a lot of people, but people will have to understand that we lived beyond our means. Spaniards will understand,” said one party leader.

The conservatives could find support from nationalists parties from Basque country and Catalonia for pro-business policies but major welfare reforms might not be enacted. “I do not intend to make social cuts,” Rajoy said this weekend. He promised tax and spending cuts but details on fiscal policy have so far not been forthcoming from the man who is widely expected to be Spain’s next prime minister.

Writing for The Nation, Eric Alterman ponders “the twilight of social democracy.” He identifies Muslim immigration as one of the forces that undermined solidarity and cohesiveness which are so pivotal to maintaining a strong welfare state. “People,” he writes, “do not generally appreciate the opportunity to be forced to subsidize, through tax and transfer policies, the lifestyles of those they deem to be different from themselves.” That may be true but it doesn’t explain why leftist parties haven’t done better in elections recently. It’s not as though Europe was suddenly overwhelmed with immigrants two years ago.

It’s clear where Alterman misses the point when he mentions “free market absolutism” and “xenophobia” in the same sentence and suggests that they’re part of a single phenomenon. That’s hardly the case. There are certainly nationalists on the political right which appeal to lower class anxiety about the future and the unknown. In Denmark and the Netherlands, these parties are even in government. But socialists on the far left appeal to the same group of people who fear that their jobs are being “stolen” by foreigners, whether they’re from Morocco or in China.

The crisis has only hardened the antiglobalist sentiment of traditional workers’ parties. It doesn’t matter whether they’re on the far left or on the far right. Protectionism is on the rise in France, whether it’s in the form of socialism or the Front nationale. Britain’s Labour Party has abandoned the Third Way just as its French counterparts have, evidenced by its election of Ed instead of David Miliband to lead it in opposition.

The economic downturn has shaken Europe’s welfare states to the core, forcing governments all over the continent to cut in social security expenditures. The stereotypical disgruntled populist voter doesn’t particularly like that though. It’s why the Front nationale in France and Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party in the Netherlands are also staunch defenders of their countries’ public health care systems and opposed to raising the retirement age.

Traditional conservative and liberal parties on the other hand favor a much smaller government and appeal to voters who are fed up with state interventionism. At the same time, they are careful not to push austerity too far. Britain’s David Cameron won’t ever privatize the National Health Service. Sweden’s John Fredrik Reinfeldt is cutting government bureaucracy but positioning his Moderate Party as the guardian of the welfare state. Mark Rutte in the Netherlands is scrapping health subsidies but shrinks from introducing labor market reforms which even some leftists parties support. They represent a new right in Europe, one that is much more centrist than their rhetoric would suggest.

The left and their union allies are marching against austerity nevertheless but even in the heavily indebted economies of southern Europe, conservatives are on the rise. The Portuguese elected a right wing government this summer and hardly anyone expects the socialists to do well in next year’s parliamentary elections in Spain. Indeed, there’s hardly a leftist government left in Europe!

The reason isn’t just xenophobia. While social democrats were cheering the alleged demise of capitalism, they never realized that their own welfarism was bankrupt and increasingly unpopular with middle class voters, including small business owners and young urban professionals who were hit hardest by the recession. They don’t just resent paying taxes to subsidize the lifestyle of people they deem to be “different” from themselves; they resent paying taxes to subsidize anyone else’s lifestyle.

What many social democrats still fail to appreciate is that the very individualism championed by their predecessors two generations ago—which improved women’s and gay rights and alleviated families of the burden of caring for their elders—was ever at odds with their appeal to “solidarity.” It’s just that globalization in the last two decades—with improved information technology and a heightened cultural awareness and interaction—has accelerated the decline of the welfare state and made it plain to nearly everyone that it’s unsustainable in its current form.

It seems to voters, even those who support a public safety net, that at least liberals and conservatives recognize that mounting health care costs, unaffordable pension commitments and overregulation are problems that need to be addressed whereas the left insists that they only beg more taxes. (Alterman mentions a global tax on millionaires.) Once the state accounts for almost half of the economy however, a majority of voters probably believes that it’s taxed enough already and time to start cutting back on spending instead.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey in Istanbul, June 11, 2011

Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) was expected to perform well in Sunday’s parliamentary elections. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his electoral powerhouse were running for a third term in office against a splintered opposition of nationalists, secularists and leftist parties.

The AKP ran on a platform of stability. Since 2002, when Erdoğan swept to power with 34 percent of the vote, the AKP has liberalized the economy and restored confidence and growth to Turkey. Nearly unaffected by the global economic downturn, Turkey’s conservative party won a strong mandate in the previous parliamentary elections of 2007, capturing 47 percent of the vote.

Turkey’s secular establishment regards Erdoğan warily with concerns about his party’s pandering to the Islamist vote. The conservatives may have only partly succeeded in repealing a ban on women wearing headscarfs in public spaces; their intentions were perfectly clear, say opponents. The AKP claims to uphold religious freedoms but secularists see growing signs of orthodox Islamism.

The AKP’s civil rights record has been notably progressive for a party that describes itself as conservative however. In an effort to meet the criteria of European Union membership, Erdoğan’s government allowed the European Court of Human Rights supremacy over the Turkish judiciary, diminished the powers of a 1991 antiterrorism law which had constrained Turkey’s democratization and abolished the death penalty.

For decades, the country’s secularists relied on the army to keep Islamism at bay while enriching themselves at the cost of financial ruin. Erdoğan began to curtail the influence of the armed forces when he came to power seven years ago and has worked to root out corruption from government altogether—a herculean task that has not been without merit. In conjunction with market reforms and free trade agreements with Turkeys’s neighbors, the economy is prospering because of it.

The main opposition Republican People’s Party, which was founded by Atatürk himself, hasn’t received much more than 20 percent of the vote in recent elections but may fare better under the new leadership of Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu who ran for mayor of Istanbul in 2009. Kılıçdaroğlu is expected to move the party further to the left and campaigned in the rural east of the country—an AKP stronghold where the social democrats haven’t performed well for generations.