Contra what happened on Saturday in Italy, in the Czech Republic “a coalition of previously divided center-right parties” have joined together to defeat populist strongman Andrej Babis, the, billionaire prime minister:
Andrew Higgins explains at The New York Times:
For the past decade, populists like Mr. Babis have often seemed politically invincible, rising to power across Central and Eastern Europe as part of a global trend of strongman leaders disdainful of democratic norms. But on Saturday, the seemingly unbeatable Mr. Babis was defeated because opposition parties put ideological differences aside and joined together to drive out a leader they fear has eroded the country’s democracy.
Their success could have major repercussions in the region and beyond. In Hungary and in Poland, where nationalist leaders have damaged democratic institutions and sought to undermine the European Union, opposition leaders are mobilizing, trying to forge unified fronts and oust populist leaders in upcoming elections.
“Populism is beatable,” said Otto Eibl, the head of the political science department at Masaryk University in Brno, the South Moravian capital. “The first step in beating a populist leader is to suppress individual egos and to compromise in the interest of bringing a change.”
John Sipher (not a pseudonym), former CIA officer and foreign policy and intelligence expert, concurs in a tweet.
Hungary next, please. Then the U.S.
This weekend, six Hungarian parties will complete a weekslong opposition primary race, the first of its kind, to whittle down the list of potential contenders in every electoral district to oppose Mr. Orban’s party. The coalition includes groups ranging from nationalist conservatives to leftists, who disagree on most things but share a fervent desire to dispatch Mr. Orban.
This approach did not succeed in ousting Russian President Vladimir Putin in recent elections. Putin’s grip on elections machinery and Russian media was already too vice-like.
Donald Trump may hold the media’s attention, but with the exception of Fox News and some fringe-right outliers, he and his cronies do not yet control major news outlets. However, Republicans across the country are attempting now to wrest control of nonpartisan election machinery and place it under their control. Or Trump’s.
In the Czech Republic, opponents branded Babis “as a bully whose wealth and corporate ties have given him an inordinate amount of power.” For the moment, they had to stand together:
Marie Jilkova, a successful anti-Babis candidate in South Moravia from one of the two coalitions of parties that came together to oppose the prime minister, said that banding together to confront Mr. Babis and his party machine “was, for us, the only way to survive — there was no alternative.”
Her own party, the Christian Democrats, differs on issues like abortion and gay marriage from the more centrist parties in her coalition, so, she said, “we agreed that we would not talk about these things during the campaign.”
Recent stories on this side of the Atlantic echo this approach. Max Boot joins with other “rational Republicans” in advocating voting with Democrats (or the least left of them). In “the battle for the soul of America’s political system, we cannot retreat to our ideological corners,” Miles “Anonymous” Taylor and former New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman wrote on Monday.
As for agreeing not to talk about areas of disagreement, that notion echoes David Shor’s advice to Democrats to focus their messages on what’s popular over more contested topics even though they need addressing. That may not even be possible for Democrats never skillful at controlling the narrative, and it will not please North American progressives. But in Europe, opponents to the rise of fascist or fascist-leaning, populist strong men are opting for expedience in the short term so democracy might live to fight over immigration and minority rights another day.