How ‘Europe’ Became a Dirty Word in the US Election

BBC: As Florida goes to the polls in its primary election for the Republican presidential candidate, how did Europe-bashing become such an issue?

"J'accuse!"

There is only one presidential contender fluent in the French tongue.

But if Mitt Romney wins the US Republican nomination, he is likely to stick to plain English when he delivers what he hopes will be a killer blow against President Barack Obama in November's general election.

Mr Romney and his chief Republican rival, Newt Gingrich - who is also said to have a passing acquaintance with French - have spent the past few months arguing that the current US president wants to turn the US into a European country.

In the US, this is not as crazy a line of attack as it might sound from Europe.

The eurozone debt crisis, and fears that Greece, Portugal, Spain and the rest might yet drag the faltering US economy down with them, has turned Europe into a dirty word in American politics.

Accusing Mr Obama of wanting to follow the same path of ever-growing welfare budgets and high taxes that supposedly led the EU nations to this pass will strike a chord with many voters.

Those who already view Europe with suspicion, deriding the continent as an economic backwater with a dubious military record, may be particularly receptive to the argument.

'Welfare state'

With the US economy starting to show signs of recovery, it could turn out to be the best shot the Republicans have of unseating Mr Obama.

Newt Gingrich has constantly accused the president of being a "European Socialist", often adding in a reference to an all-but-forgotten community activist from Chicago, who died in 1972, but whose Democratic-leaning writings are thought to have influenced the current president.

"I am for the Declaration of Independence; he is for the writing of Saul Alinsky. I am for the Constitution; he is for European socialism," Mr Gingrich told voters in Florida last week.

When pushed, Mr Romney will also use the "S" word. » | Brian Wheeler, BBC News, Washington | Monday, January 30, 2012

Barack Obama Is Trying to Make the US a More Socialist State
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: The ideas the President outlined in the State of the Union are based on the very model that is causing the EU to implode.

What was it everybody used to say about the United States? Look at what’s happening over there and you will see our future. Whatever Americans are doing now, we will be catching up with them in another 10 years or so. In popular culture or political rhetoric, America led the fashion and we tagged along behind.

Well, so much for that. Barack Obama is now putting the United States squarely a decade behind Britain. Listening to the President’s State of the Union message last week was like a surreal visit to our own recent past: there were, almost word for word, all those interminable Gordon Brown Budgets that preached “fairness” while listing endless new ways in which central government would intervene in every form of economic activity.

Later, in a television interview, Mr Obama described his programme of using higher taxes on the wealthy to bankroll new government spending as “a recipe for a fair, sound approach to deficit reduction and rebuilding this country”. To which we who come from the future can only shout, “No o-o, go back! Don’t come down this road!”

As we try desperately to extricate ourselves from the consequences of that philosophy, which sounds so eminently reasonable (“giving everybody a fair share”, the President called it), we could tell America a thing or two – if it would only listen. Human beings are so much more complicated than this childlike conception of fairness assumes. When government takes away an ever larger proportion of the wealth which entrepreneurial activity creates and attempts to distribute it “fairly” (that is to say, evenly) throughout society in the form of welfare programmes and public spending projects, the effects are much, much more complex and perverse than a simple financial equation would suggest.

It is probably obvious that the people from whom the wealth is taken will become less willing to incur the risks that entrepreneurial investment involves – and so will produce less wealth, and thus less tax revenue. But more surprising, perhaps, are the damaging changes that take place in the beneficiaries of this “fairness” and the permanent effect this has on the balance of power between government and the people. Read on and comment » | Janet Daley | Saturday, January 28, 2012

François Hollande Vows to Tax the Rich to Pay Off French Deficit
THE GUARDIAN: Leftwing frontrunner in presidential race launches manifesto on how Socialist party would deal with financial crisis


François Hollande, the leftwing frontrunner in the French presidential race, has vowed to make the rich pay the highest price to help drag France out of its economic crisis, while promising to pump more money into schools and state-assisted jobs.

The Socialist rural MP, who recently declared "my real adversary in this campaign is the world of finance", launched his manifesto on Thursday, a road map of how the left would deal with the financial crisis. Hollande said he would raise taxes for banks and big companies as well as France's richest people, and use the money to help wipe out the nation's crippling public deficit.

By scrapping some €29bn (£24bn) worth of tax breaks for wealthier people introduced under Nicolas Sarkozy, he said he could find €20bn to deal with the corrosion of French society: record unemployment, soaring youth jobless figures and an education system that has been shamed as one of the most unequal in Europe, where one in six children leave with no qualifications. » | Angelique Chrisafis | Thursday, January 26, 2012

Spain's Zapatero Faces Calls to Resign as Socialists Hammered in Local Elections

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Spain's ruling socialist party were reeling from an unprecedented battering in local elections Sunday as voters punished Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriquez Zapatero for his handling of the economic crisis.

The centre-right Popular Party (PP) won a resounding victory across the board in the regional and municipal elections, securing a ten per cent lead over their rivals, in a result seen as a precursor for general elections scheduled early next year.

Spain's Socialists lost control of traditional strongholds including the cities of Barcelona and Seville while the PP took Castilla-La Mancha, which had been governed by the socialists since the first democratic elections in 1979, four years after the death of dictator Gen Francisco Franco.

Pressure mounted for Prime Minister Zapatero to resign and call an early general election. But the socialist leader, who swept to power in 2004 and who has said he will not seek a third term, vowed to carry on reforms until the vote next March.

Conceding defeat, the prime minister blamed discontent on three years of economic crisis which has left Spain with a stagnant economy and 21 per cent unemployment, more than twice the EU average.

"We have suffered a broad setback compared to four years ago," he told a news conference after the first results came through, Sunday night. » | Fiona Govan, Madrid | Monday, May 23, 2011

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, President of Spain »

WIKI: José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Prime Minister of Spain »

Castros Embrace Reform at Cuba's Communist Congress
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Cuba’s communist leaders kicked off a crucial party congress with a huge parade celebrating the 50th anniversary of the defeat of the invasion by CIA-backed exiles at the Bay of Pigs.

Military music and revolutionary slogans were broadcast from loudspeakers as ranks of soldiers marched through Revolution Square past President Raul [sic] Castro and fellow regime dignitaries.

Jet fighters roared overhead, helicopters flew by and assault vehicles drove through the square before hundreds of thousands of civilians - from college students to factory workers – filed past the podium.

"Long live the Communist Party of Cuba! Long Live the Cuban Revolution! Long Live Fidel! Long Live Raul [sic]!” a female announcer shouted. Fidel Castro, the country’s ailing former leader, did not make an appearance.

But away from the communist fervour and propaganda, the country’s ageing leaders were preparing for a party congress that will be crucial for the regime’s survival.

Raul [sic] Castro is seeking his comrades’ endorsement for market reforms designed to bolster the creaking Soviet-style economy while maintaining their firm grip on one-party power. » | Christopher Hart, Havana | Saturday, April 16, 2011

Margaret Thatcher on Socialism

Barack Obama Compared to Hitler and Lenin in Tea Party Billboard
THE TELEGRAPH: A roadside billboard created by a branch of the Tea Party in Iowa comparing President Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin has been condemned by other groups in the movement.

North Iowa Tea Party co-founder Bob Johnson said the sign highlighted what the group argues is Mr Obama's support for socialism. Photograph: The Telegraph
The North Iowa Tea Party began displaying the sign in Mason City last week. It shows photographs of Mr Obama, the German Nazi leader and Russian communist with the statement: "Radical leaders prey on the fearful & naive."

The words "Democratic Socialism" are featured over Mr Obama's picture, over Hitler's photo is "National Socialism" and over Lenin's head is "Marxist Socialism." The word "Change" – Mr Obama's campaign slogan – is included on each photo.

North Iowa Tea Party co-founder Bob Johnson said the sign highlighted what the group argues is Mr Obama's support for socialism. >>> Alex Spillius in Washington | Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Barack Obama: A Socialist in Disguise?

Sean Hannity: This Is Socialism


Sean Hannity: We Can Take Our Country Back

Carl Dix, Revolutionary Communist Party of America: Revolution Is the Solution*

*This has all been tried before, Mr Dix. And we have seen what the outcome of it was. A communist revolution is NOT the solution. Even the Soviet Union had to abandon that idea. So what have you got new to add, Mr Dix? – Mark

In Health Care Bill, Obama Attacks Wealth Inequality
THE NEW YORK TIMES: For all the political and economic uncertainties about health reform, at least one thing seems clear: The bill that President Obama signed on Tuesday is the federal government’s biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago.

Over most of that period, government policy and market forces have been moving in the same direction, both increasing inequality. The pretax incomes of the wealthy have soared since the late 1970s, while their tax rates have fallen more than rates for the middle class and poor.

Nearly every major aspect of the health bill pushes in the other direction. This fact helps explain why Mr. Obama was willing to spend so much political capital on the issue, even though it did not appear to be his top priority as a presidential candidate. Beyond the health reform’s effect on the medical system, it is the centerpiece of his deliberate effort to end what historians have called the age of Reagan. >>> David Leonhardt | Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Nicolas Sarkozy’s Right-wing UMP Thrashed in French Elections
THE TELEGRAPH: Nicolas Sarkozy will seek to relaunch his embattled presidency on Monday after his Right-wing party suffered a crushing defeat in France’s regional elections, seen as a test of his popularity.

French current Socialist President of Poitou-Charentes region Segolene Royal. Photograph: The Telegraph
Mr Sarkozy’s Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) was on course last night to lose in all but one of 22 regions in mainland France. As one analyst put it, the president must reinvent “le Sarkozysme 2.0” — a new ideology to woo disillusioned voters in the run-up to 2012 presidential elections.

A coalition between the opposition Socialists and Greens, whose party is called Europe Ecologie, swept the floor in the second round vote marked by a low turnout - 51 per cent - and the lowest score for the Right in more than three decades.

As polling stations closed, exit polls gave the Socialists and Greens 54 per cent of the vote, the UMP 36 percent and the far-Right National Front just under nine per cent.

Despite pushing hard-line policies on immigration and security, the president’s allies were weakened by a strong showing for the National Front, which won no regions but was in 12 run-offs.

The UMP’s sole consolation, besides holding Alsace, was taking the Indian Ocean island of Réunion. >>> Henry Samuel in Paris | Sunday, March 21, 2010

leJDD.fr: La gauche en force : Comme annoncé, la gauche a largement remporté les élections régionales, dont le second tour s'est déroulé dimanche. Dans le détail, la majorité UMP-Nouveau centre a toutefois évité une déroute totale en conservant l'Alsace. Outre-mer, La Réunion a également basculé de gauche à droite. >>> Nicolas Moscovici, leJDD.fr | Dimanche 21 Mars 2010

Regionalwahlen in Frankreich: Das angekündigte Debakel des Nicolas Sarkozy
WELT ONLINE: Nicolas Sarkozys Partei UMP erleidet bei den französischen Regionalwahlen eine schwere Niederlage – Sozialisten siegen in fast allen Regionen. Schon bald trifft Sarkozy mit Premierminister Fillon zusammen: Es wird damit gerechnet, dass der Präsident zumindest mit einer kleinen Kabinettsumbildung reagiert.

Regierungschef François Fillon nannte das Ergebnis von 36 Prozent "eine Enttäuschung" für die Bürgerlichen, für die er Verantwortung übernehme. Bild: Welt Online
Die Regierungspartei von Präsident Nicolas Sarkozy hat in der zweiten Runde der Regionalwahlen die erwartete deutliche Niederlage hinnehmen müssen. Nach ersten Hochrechnungen kam die UMP im Landedurchschnitt auf lediglich 36,1 Prozent der Stimmen. Die Sozialisten (PS), die in den meisten Regionen mit Grünen und Kommunisten gemeinsame Listen gebildet hatten, kamen dagegen auf 54,3 Prozent. Die rechtsextreme Front National erreichte landesweit 8,7 Prozent.

In den 22 französischen Kern-Regionen konnte sich die UMP lediglich im traditionell rechten Elsass durchsetzen. Selbst im ebenfalls in der Regel konservativ tendierenden Korsika setzte sich die PS – wie in 19 weiteren Regionen - durch. Im Languedoc-Roussillon siegte zudem mit Gerge Frèche ein Kandidat, der nur deswegen nicht mehr offiziell als Sozialist gilt, weil die Parteiführung unter der Vorsitzenden Martine Aubry den Provinzfürsten wenige Wochen vor der Wahl wegen als antisemitisch interpretierbarer Bemerkungen von ihrer Liste gestrichen hatte.

Die Regionalwahlen sind die letzten Wahlen in Frankreich vor der nächsten Präsidentschaftswahl im Jahr 2012 und gelten deshalb als wichtiger Stimmungstest. Sarkozy wird am Montagmorgen mit Premierminister François Fillon im Élysée-Palast zusammenkommen und über Konsequenzen aus dem Wahlergebnis beraten. >>> Von Sascha Lehnartz | Sontag, 21. März 2010

Margaret Thatcher on Socialism

France's Socialist Party Takes on Sarkozy

Election Candidate in Headscarf Causes Uproar in France
THE GUARDIAN: Feminists and politicians protest after anti-capitalist Olivier Besancenot fields Muslim woman who covers her hair

Olivier Besancenot, the postman-turned-revolutionary at the helm of France's anti-capitalist movement, has been fiercely criticised from all sides of the political spectrum for fielding a headscarf-wearing candidate in forthcoming elections.

Ilham Moussaid, a 21-year-old Muslim woman who describes herself as "feminist, secular and veiled", is running for the far-left New Anti-Capitalist party (NPA) in the south-eastern region of Avignon.

But, despite her insistence that there is no contradiction between her clothing and her political role, Moussaid's candidacy in the regional vote due in March has angered other feminists and politicians.

In an echo of the controversy raised by recent moves to ban the full, face-covering veil in public places such as schools, hospitals and buses, critics have said that the young activist's headscarf, which conceals only her hair, goes against values of laïcité – secularism – and women's rights.

Today, in a sign of how deep concerns are running, a leading feminist group announced it would file an official complaint against the NPA's list of candidates in the Vaucluse département to protest against what it called an "anti-secular, anti-feminist and anti-republican" stunt.

"In choosing to endorse 'open' laïcité, the NPA is perverting the values of the Republic and suggesting we reread them in a manner which conforms with regressive visions of women," said the Ni Putes Ni Soumises (Neither Whores Nor Submissives) association in a statement.

Others have expressed their shock at Besancenot's attempt to field a candidate who sees no problem with making an overt statement about her religion in the public sphere, a practice considered taboo. >>> Lizzy Davies in Paris | Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Jewish Documentary: Faith and Fate

Tea Party Convention Stalled by Racially-charged Opening Remarks
THE TELEGRAPH: A conference designed to galvanise opposition to Barack Obama's "big government" agenda has hit controversy after racially-charged remarks by the opening speaker, a leading anti-immigration campaigner.

Tom Tancredo, who served for ten years as a Republican in Congress, said America's first black president was only elected because "we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country".

Such tests were used to prevent blacks from voting during segregation and were banned by the landmark civil rights legislation of 1964.

Speaking at the first National Tea Party convention, Mr Tancredo also denounced the "cult of multiculturalism". The 2008 election had "put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House ... Barack Hussein Obama," he said, using the president's Islamic middle name.

"This is our country," he told the audience. "Let's take it back." >>> Alex Spillius in Nashville | Friday, February 05, 2010

Tea Party Turns Nasty: ‘It’s Our Country – Let’s Take It Back’
TIMES ONLINE: They will proudly boast of how they have galvanised ordinary Americans against runaway government spending, but a dark underbelly of xenophobia has been exposed at the first national gathering of the Tea Party movement.

Here in the vast Gaylord resort in Nashville, where 600 members of the conservative grassroots phenomenon that exploded in revolt against President Obama’s economic policies have gathered, it would be advisable not to wear a T-shirt declaring “I am an illegal immigrant”.

The anti-Government, anti-Establishment movement, which has splintered in the past week with many boycotting this gathering, has billed itself as a revolution born of the widespread disgust at Washington and the way that the nation’s politicians are bankrupting America’s future.

With its raucous protests it has undeniably become a political force that threatens to hand Democrats a disastrous midterm election night in November. Voter anger against spending and debt, of which the Tea Partiers are in the vanguard, played a significant role in the recent loss of the late Edward Kennedy’s Senate seat and could conceivably lead to Democrats losing the House and Senate.

Yet the speech that opened the Nashville event yesterday, an address greeted with whoops and cheers from the mainly white audience, reflects a movement that also appears to have a less attractive side to it.

Tom Tancredo, a former Republican congressman who ran for president in 2008 on an anti-illegal immigration platform, said of the voters who elected Mr Obama: “They could not even spell the word ‘vote’ or say it in English and they put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House — Barack Hussein Obama!”[.]

Decrying America’s multiculturalism, Mr Tancredo said that Republicans and Democrats had voted for a black man because they felt they had to. To a standing ovation, he shouted: “We really do have a culture to pass on to our children: it’s based on Judaeo-Christian values.”

“This is our country,” he declared. “Let’s take it back!” He added, to applause: “Cultures are not the same. Some are better. Ours is best!” The crowd, some wearing recently purchased T-shirts saying “Keep the change — I’ll keep my FREEDOM my GUNS and my MONEY”, loved it. >>> Tim Reid in Nashville | Saturday, February 06, 2010

Milton Friedman: Socialism vs. Capitalism

Mandelson Shows Labour Is a Party Rotten with Decadence
MAIL ONLINE: The sumptuous home of financier Jacob Rothschild, Waddesdon Manor, has long been famed as one of Britain's most magnificent country houses.

But for all its splendour and beauty, the estate has this week been associated with an extraordinary weekend shooting party which symbolises the decadence, corruption and moral collapse of modern British socialism.

No novelist would have dared to invent such an occasion. The host was a leading member of the world's richest and most famous banking dynasty. The guests included the son of a bloodthirsty and oil-rich Arab dictator, and the discredited wife of a former British prime minister.

And totally at home in all this gilded opulence was the remarkable figure of Lord Mandelson, former Young Communist, far Left activist, major player in three successive Labour election victories and right-hand man to Gordon Brown.

One might have expected such a figure to have been repelled by so much opulence and wealth. Instead, Mandelson clearly revels in it. The drab lives of the hard-working men and women who placed their faith in Labour at three consecutive general elections hold no appeal to him.

Mandelson now only seems truly at home in grand country houses or on the yachts of billionaires such as his Russian oligarch friend Oleg Deripaska, whose guest he was during the summer of 2008.

The truth is that his attendance at a shooting party with Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi's son is a perfect parable of the decadent Left's embrace of everything it claims to despise.

Nor is Mandelson an exception. Practically every member of Tony Blair's Cabinet which took office in 1997 has since sold out to wealth and power.

Blair himself is a perfect example. Since leaving office, he has become a popular member of the international plutocracy; a consultant to an investment bank who has earned an estimated £15 million since leaving Downing Street.

While at No 10, Blair was shamefully attracted to extremely rich men. On one occasion, government policy was even changed after the tycoon Bernie Ecclestone donated £1 million to the Labour Party.

Peerages were for sale under his government, while his wife Cherie blatantly profiteered from her status of First Lady by accepting free gifts and discounts from retailers. >>> Peter Oborne | Friday, November 27, 2009

Margaret Thatcher on Socialism