Another staunch Pro-American leader is elected to office in Europe!
All communist party parliament members eliminated for the the first time since WW II.
President Bush and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi walk together after arriving at Camp David, in this Sept. 14, 2002 file photo, in Thurmont, Md. Conservative leader Silvio Berlsuconi says he feels a great responsibility after winning Italian elections. Berlusconi has made his first public comments in a phone call to RAI public television after elections returns gave him a clear victory Monday, April 14, 2008. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer/Files)
After only two years leading the country, the Far Left Prodi government was not just beaten yesterday they were completely squashed in the Italian elections.
The communists were completely wiped out.
The BBC reported:
Centre-right leader Silvio Berlusconi has warned of “difficult months ahead” after winning Italy’s general election.
Mr Berlusconi, who is due to return to Rome from his home in northern Italy on Tuesday, won control of both the senate and lower house of parliament.
The decisive victory gives him a third term as prime minister.
After being congratulated by defeated rival Walter Veltroni, the media mogul said he would work with the opposition to pass much-needed economic reforms.
The polls were held three years ahead of schedule following the collapse of Romano Prodi’s centre-left coalition.
Mr Berlusconi’s new government will be Italy’s 62nd since World War II.
Michael Ledeen has more on this historic election at The Corner:
Huge, perhaps historic, victory for Berlusconi’s “Popolo della liberta’ ” (which translates a bit awkwardly as “the people of liberty;” maybe it’s better to call it “the freedom folks”). It’s considerably worse than AP lets on. Berlusconi defeated Walter Veltroni’s “Democratic Party” by a full 9 points in both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. And since the Italian electoral system gives a bonus to the winning side, the margins are very big and stable: 340 to 241 in the Chamber (with another 36 for a couple of small parties), and 167 to 137 in the Senate (with 5 to three little parties), which was expected to be a photo finish. Eighty percent voted, down about three percent from last time.
The big news is that the Communists are gone, for the first time since the end of the Second World War. Really gone. They didn’t win a single seat in either chamber. A lot of famous faces will vanish from Parliament, and it is even possible, although unlikely, that some of the comrades will be forced to join the working class. The Greens are also gone. In fact, there are only six parties in the new Parliament, suggesting that Italy’s well on the road to a two-party political system instead of the dreadful proportional electoral model that has destroyed virtually every country where it’s been applied. If that happens, a lot of the credit goes to Veltroni, who created a real center-left party and refused to admit the old Left.
Tomorrow’s papers will pretend that this didn’t happen, and warn that Berlusconi’s allies in the Northern League are mercurial and dangerous, and that his majority isn’t as stable as it looks. But it is. And there’s an even more annoying feature to these elections, as seen by the chattering classes: Berlusconi is an outspoken, even passionate admirer of George W. Bush and the United States of America.
It’s sort of hard for the Far Left here at home to insist that they all hate us in Europe when they continue to vote in pro-American governments.
But, they will.
Eye on the World has more on the return of Berlusconi.
