Obama moves left, Europe moves right

If Europe is moving to the center-right after decades of failed far-left socialism, why is Barack Obama taking the U.S. toward the European model? Just asking.

From an editorial, "The European vote: Left death knell," in The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

Pushing back against their continent's left-of-center "social democracy" tradition by rewarding center-right parties, European voters sent a message that should reverberate in Washington.

Of 736 seats in the European Parliament, center-right parties won 264, leftist parties 183 -- an endorsement, amid economic crisis, of fiscal restraint and less government intervention, hallmarks of traditional U.S. economic policy.

That American tradition has been upended by the bailouts, stimulus spending and virtual nationalizations engineered by President Obama and congressional Democrats. They should worry about whether the European vote foreshadows a similar rebuke of their free-spending, interventionist ways by U.S. voters in 2010's midterm elections.

Congressional Democrats also should worry about whether anti-leftist sentiment among American voters goes deeper than today's economic woes. It does in Europe, where parties opposed to the European Union, including some that want to abolish the very parliament in which they sought seats, also made notable gains.

The EU is social democracy writ large, so the European vote is a rejection of that failed, left-leaning political philosophy -- and a loud, clear warning to Washington power brokers that voters' tolerance for creeping socialism is nearing its end on both sides of the Atlantic.