Sunday, February 27, 2011

Ireland Swings To The Right-Sort Of

Today over 70% of Irish voters punished the ruling Fianna Fail party and gave the center-right Fine Gael party a chance to govern this economically troubled land.
The economy of Ireland suffers from the same fate that ruined the Iceland economy and is all but ruining Greece, Spain and Portugal. It has the potential to break up the European Union.
But the fact of the matter is that there is something more of a rearranging of the deck chairs of the Titanic rather than something that will fundamentally change Ireland.
As noted in the link to the Fine Gael, it is kind of sort of to the right, in regards to Irish politics. Yet it looks to coalition with the Labour party, a left-wing party.
The voters did not have a Tea Party type of leader or party to turn to.
As of this posting, The Fine Gael has 70 seats in the 166-seat Irish parliament. To govern outright, they will need to have 84 seats. If everything goes FG's way, they still will remain short. The outgoing FF is projected to have 18 seats in the new parliament. A total repudiation.
The good news is that the FG may be able to form a coalition government with the help of a slew of independents that have won election. The bad news is we do not know if there are any conservatives or center-right people among these independents.
What does all of this mean for the United States?
It means that Ireland is rejecting the strong medicine imposed on them by the European Union. It means that Irish voters may be looking for a kind of Tea Party revolt. It means that once again the United State government is behind the ball on a potentially critical foreign policy situation.
Hopefully, Irish voters are giving this new government a chance to see if it can bring the nation out of the economic doldrums on its own terms and not imposed on them by Brussel's European bureaucrats.

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