Hot off our Town Square Forums, this item posted by PTBC’er Frogg, via sweetness-light.com:
Sweden (Yes, Sweden!) Goes Conservative
One of the rare mentions of this rather amazing turnabout, from the DNC’s Associated Press:
Sweden Votes In Conservative Leader
By KATARINA KRATOVAC
STOCKHOLM, Sweden – Fredrik Reinfeldt, leader of the center-right coalition that won Swedish parliamentary elections on Sunday, once wrote a book criticizing the country’s vaunted cradle-to-grave welfare state…
The 41-year old leader of the main opposition Moderate Party is decidedly more pro-American than Prime Minister Goran Persson, who Reinfeldt defeated.
He has criticized the President Bush’s administration, saying “a long list of mistakes” were committed in Iraq. But he also has said: “I have not experienced any conflict in the world where people don’t stand up and call for the Americans to come there and solve it. You can’t forget that.”
Political opponents often point to Reinfeldt’s 1993 book “The Sleeping Nation,” in which he criticized the cradle-to-grave welfare state…
The Moderates’ more controversial goals such as privatizing state-owned companies and ending Sweden’s traditional neutrality to join NATO were hardly mentioned during the campaign.
Reinfeldt has compared himself to Canada’s Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper or British Conservative leader David Cameron.
He has said many reforms were needed in the U.N., describing his disenchantment when listening to Cuba’s foreign minister give a speech to the General Assembly in 2004 which he said glorified communism while delivering a “giant attack on the USA.”
“It was one of the worst things I’ve heard,” Reinfeldt recalled. “But he got a standing ovation from the present delegates. That tells you that this U.N. system isn’t perfect.
“It should not become a scratch-each-other-on-the-back society for dictatorships,” he added. “That may explain why the USA sometimes chooses to act on its own.”
The socialists have had near total control of Sweden for the last ninety some years. And yet this election has gotten scant attention from our one party media.
Australia, Canada, Germany, Mexico…
Heck, thinking back, even Jacques Chirac was considered a conservative when he was first elected. (Until he was bought off by the millions he garnered from the UN’s “Oil For Food” scam.)
Who’s next?
Go directly to Frogg’s thread in our Town Square Forums to comment/discuss.
(Therefore, comments are turned off for this particular blog entry).
EXTRAS:
Historic shift in Swedish election
by Nicholas Claude, freelance writerSweden soon has a new government and a new Prime Minister. The center-right alliance led by Fredrik Reinfeldt of the Moderate Party won a narrow victory over the ruling Social Democrats and their left-wing allies. […]
* As of 11:49 AM PDT, I can find no article about this at the Canada’s state-run media web site, CBC.ca. UPDATE – still nothing at 4:28 PM PDT on September 18 2006.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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