According to the New York Times this morning, the elections in Europe and in particular in Germany last Sunday demonstrate that in spite of the troubles right-wing parties found themselves into during the financial crisis, the Left was unable to convince voters that socialism was the answer to their problems.

German voters clobbered the Social Democratic Party on Sunday, giving it only 23 percent of the vote, its worst performance since World War II.
Voters also punished left-leaning candidates in the summer’s European Parliament elections and trounced French Socialists in 2007. Where the left holds power, as in Spain and Britain, it is under attack. Where it is out, as in France, Italy and now Germany, it is divided and listless.

The article goes on to confirm what I have always said about Sarkozy and Merkel. This is the best Europe has to offer right now. They are non-socialist rulers, with a few good quotes about free-market economics, but a fundamental lack of understanding of what capitalism is about.

Europe’s conservatives, says Michel Winock, a historian at the Paris Institut d’Études Politiques, “have adapted themselves to modernity.” When Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Germany’s Angela Merkel condemn the excesses of the “Anglo-Saxon model” of capitalism while praising the protective power of the state, they are using Socialist ideas that have become mainstream, he said.

It’s not a combo that would make me pack my things and move back to Europe with my kids.

Read the whole thing here.

Thanks to Mercatus’s Jim Musser for the tip.