Bush is Toxic to Foreign Leaders

By DHinMI

We already knew that associating with the Bush administration isn't good for foreign leaders and parties, and a little bit of measured Bush bashing (like Gerhard Schroeder did in the last German election) is often enough to put a candidate over the top.  Over at Daily Kos, Markos has a piece about some dial testing Frank Luntz supposedly did in the UK in which participants had an immediate and vehement negative reaction just at the sight of George Bush standing next to Tony Blair.  Now, we have this:

Berlusconi 'Massacred' in Regional Elections

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi suffered a crushing defeat at Italian regional elections, official results showed on Monday, a huge boost for center-left leader Romano Prodi's hopes of unseating him next year.

In what one of his defeated regional governors described as a "massacre," Berlusconi's center-right coalition appeared to have lost 11 of the 13 regions at stake, holding on to just two -- Lombardy and Veneto -- both in its stronghold in the north.

Prodi, who had said he would be satisfied by winning just one new seat, was delighted by his landslide victory.

"Today we have easily won in terms of the number of votes and the number of regions," he told a news conference.

"With this vote Italians are asking us to prepare to govern, to take the country forward."

The death of Pope John Paul II  on Saturday overshadowed the election but did not keep voters away. Turnout reached 71.4 percent, down just 1.7 percentage points from the last one.

Berlusconi had prepared his supporters for a poor result, saying he expected a mid-term backlash due to Italy's economic woes. But the outcome was far worse than expected.

Although the final count would not be finished until Tuesday, late preliminary results indicated the center-left had wrested six regions from government parties, giving it control of 15 of Italy's 20 regions.

I'm no expert in Italian electoral history, and the analogy is a bit inapt, as these were regional elections that won't directly affect parliament, but this sounds like the type of good ol' ass-whoopin' that Democrats suffered in 1994.  Berlusconi, in part because of his tremendous wealth and his control of much of Italy's broadcast media, is at the nexus of conservative power in the country, and would be extremely difficult to dislodge by insurgents from within his coalition.  So like with Tom DeLay, his coalition seems fated to either survive or fail with him at the helm.  And with opposition to Italian involvement in Iraq aggravated and probably heightened by the shooting in Iraq of Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena and the death of the intelligence officer who had just brokered her release, it's likely that Berlusconi's demise will eventually come in significant part due to his dalliance with Bush in the Coalition of the Coerced.

So, do you think Tony Blair is sleeping much these days?

Comments

[Ellen Dana Nagler]

The mighty are falling. This sounds very much like what happened with the French regional elections last year. A free flow of votes to the left. I LOVE Old Europe!