{"id":7697,"date":"2012-05-07T11:36:26","date_gmt":"2012-05-07T18:36:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=7697"},"modified":"2012-05-07T11:36:26","modified_gmt":"2012-05-07T18:36:26","slug":"european-voters-are-rejecting-republican-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/07\/european-voters-are-rejecting-republican-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"European Voters are Rejecting Republican Policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is true that Republicans not in charge in Europe, but since Austerity<\/em> is best defined as paying for the excesses of the rich by taking away the basic needs of the poor and middle classes, the policy itself is similar to what Republicans do.  The only difference is that the GOP version is far more cruel and draconian.  Yesterday\u2019s elections were good for Europe and a good example for the US.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"7hollande\"The election of Francois Hollande in France gives the leaders of struggling southern European countries a new ally in their effort to temper the German-led drive for rigid austerity that has exacerbated their economic woes<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Socialist Hollande’s victory breaks up the centre-right tandem of his predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany’s Angela Merkel, whose European fiscal pact demanded deep spending cuts in Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece.<\/p>\n

Southern European leaders – including centre-right ones who might have publicly preferred Sarkozy – will cheer the prospect of more time to meet deficit targets and support for proposals such as euro area bonds and coordinated stimulus spending.<\/p>\n

In their own election on Sunday, Greek voters abandoned traditional parties from both the left and right that had supported austerity, dealing another hard blow to the Sarkozy-Merkel policies that had become the European consensus\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Reuters<\/a>><\/p>\n

Paul Krugman had an excellent take on this.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"7Austerity\"The French are revolting. The Greeks, too. And it\u2019s about time<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

Both countries held elections Sunday that were in effect referendums on the current European economic strategy, and in both countries voters turned two thumbs down. It\u2019s far from clear how soon the votes will lead to changes in actual policy, but time is clearly running out for the strategy of recovery through austerity \u2014 and that\u2019s a good thing<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

Needless to say, that\u2019s not what you heard from the usual suspects in the run-up to the elections. It was actually kind of funny to see the apostles of orthodoxy trying to portray the cautious, mild-mannered Fran\u00e7ois Hollande as a figure of menace. He is \u201crather dangerous,\u201d declared The Economist, which observed that he \u201cgenuinely believes in the need to create a fairer society.\u201d Quelle horreur! <\/p>\n

What is true is that Mr. Hollande\u2019s victory means the end of \u201cMerkozy,\u201d the Franco-German axis that has enforced the austerity regime of the past two years. This would be a \u201cdangerous\u201d development if that strategy were working, or even had a reasonable chance of working. But it isn\u2019t and doesn\u2019t; it\u2019s time to move on<\/strong>. Europe\u2019s voters, it turns out, are wiser than the Continent\u2019s best and brightest\u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <NY Times<\/a>><\/p>\n

Krugman is spot-on, and of course, the Republican plan for the US is what Europeans are rejecting, only worse.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is true that Republicans not in charge in Europe, but since Austerity is best defined as paying for the excesses of the rich by taking away the basic needs of the poor and middle classes, the policy itself is similar to what Republicans do.  The only difference is that the GOP version is far […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7697\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}