Geert Wilders and the Real Story of the Election

Following-up, "The Dutch Coalition Government."

From Daniel Greenfield, at FrontPage Magazine:

Geert Wilders and the Real Story of the Election https://t.co/Jx82X5jiwG

— Geert Wilders (@geertwilderspvv) March 16, 2017

The Dutch Coalition Government

Following-up, "Dutch Election Sows (Shows) Extreme Political Fragmentation."

From, Matthew E. Bergman, a lecturer at University of California at San Diego, at the Monkey Cage, "The Dutch pushed back against Geert Wilders’s ‘Patriotic Spring.’ Here’s what you need to know":

Has the “Patriotic Spring” sprung? What’s next for #Netherlands after elections, now @monkeycageblog https://t.co/KC0Cpre7Qg

— Joshua Tucker (@j_a_tucker) March 16, 2017

What does a coalition look like?

In multiparty countries, the absence of a clear majority winner means parties bargain over policy and government positions until a coalition emerges that can earn the support of a majority in parliament. In the Netherlands, once that bargaining is done, a more formal coalition agreement then names the prime minister and cabinet, which then draws up the Government’s Statement of policy priorities.

This coalition bargaining process in the Netherlands generally takes about three months. Large parties hold a bargaining advantage because they require fewer partners to form a majority.

Since World War II, the largest Dutch party has been either the centrist Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA), the social democratic Labor Party (PvdA), or the conservative People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). Coalitions form around the leader of one of these three to be the prime minister.

As noted in Figure 1, the Labor Party (PvdA) suffered a loss of 26 seats. There are numerous parties of the left and center, along with smaller parties. But adding together the seats claimed by the PvdA, Green Left (GL), Socialist (SP), Christian Union (CU), Party for the Animals (PvdD), pensioners’ (50 Plus) and multiculturalism (DENK) parties falls far short of the necessary majority.

All the major parties during the campaign pledged not to work with Wilders, even though the PPV holds a sizable number of seats. In 2012, Wilders backed out of his governing arrangement with the VVD and CDA. That episode and his further radicalization and controversial statements may leave PPV out of the final coalition.

ICYMI: Scott Weidensaul, The First Frontier

At Amazon, Scott Weidensaul, The First Frontier: The Forgotten History of Struggle, Savagery, and Endurance in Early America.

William Y. Chalfant, Hancock's War

At Amazon, William Y. Chalfant, Hancock's War: Conflict on the Southern Plains.

Also, Dangerous Passage: The Santa Fe Trail and the Mexican War, and Without Quarter: The Wichita Expedition and the Fight on Crooked Creek.

On St. Patrick's Day, Learn What Marx and Engels Thought of Irish Immigrants

At Blazing Cat Fur.

David Horowitz, The Left in Power: Clinton to Obama

From David Horowitz, at Amazon, The Black Book of the American Left — Volume VII: The Left in Power: Clinton to Obama.

President Trump's Sweeping Budget Cuts Would Fund 'Hard Power'

I love this!

At the Los Angeles Times, "Trump's 'hard power' budget makes sweeping cuts to EPA and State Department, boosts defense spending":

President Trump released a spending plan Thursday that would slash programs across government with a machete to pay for sharp increases in the military, veterans’ health and the construction of a wall along the southwest border.

On the chopping block: billions of dollars in research aimed at fighting diseases and climate change; job training programs; grants to local communities that pay for public transit and housing, heating oil for the poor; diplomatic efforts across the globe; and libraries.

Proposed for elimination: at least 19 independent agencies including the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Trump argued that many of the programs he wants to slash are ineffective, outdated or duplicative. Beyond that, he says the budget is sending a message to reorder $1.1 trillion in the federal government’s discretionary spending around his “America First” agenda, putting defense and border security at the center while curtailing other government functions.

“We can't spend money on programs just because they sound good,” said Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget and a conservative former congressman from South Carolina.

In addition to proposing cuts across the spectrum, Trump would increase funding for school choice, counter-terrorism and the hiring of more border agents and immigration judges and prosecutors. But the biggest increase, by far, would go to the military in the form of an additional $54 billion in annual spending.

The budget, which lacks many details Trump and his agency leaders will add in the coming months, will not become law in its current form...

More.

Mike Huckabee Blasts United Nations Report Calling Israel an 'Apartheid State' (VIDEO)

Good for him.

Watch, "Fox News contributor sounds off: It's time for the U.S. to quit funding this is nonsense."

Myla Dalbesio in Curacao (VIDEO)

Via Sports Illustrated Swimsuit:

Shop Deals at Amazon

I appreciate all the reader support. I mostly love Amazon for the books. I love posting and learning about all these books. And I use the commissions to buy books, heh. I've never really blogged for the money. When Amazon cut off California from the marketplace in the sales tax standoff, I just kept blogging as always.

In any case, I do thank all of you for your support. It's very nice of you. I'm a humble community college professor. American Power isn't as popular as it used to be, although I like to think I can still fill niche here, especially with unabashedly pro-American and politically incorrect blogging. That's never going to change.

In any case, at Amazon, Today's Deals.

Also, Audio Technica AT-LP120BK-USB Direct-Drive Professional Turntable (USB & Analog), Black.

Here, AmazonBasics Apple Certified Lightning to USB Cable - 6 Feet (1.8 Meters) - White.

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More, Mountain House Just In Case...Breakfast Bucket.

Plus, Koffee Kult - Medium Roast Coffee Beans (2 lb Whole Bean) Highest Quality Delicious Coffee - Fresh Gourmet Aromatic Artisan Blend - Packaging May Vary.

BONUS: Harvey Klehr, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, and The Soviet World of American Communism.

ICYMI: David Horowitz, Take No Prisoners

Following-up, "David Horowitz Interview with Dave Rubin (VIDEO)."

At Amazon, David Horowitz, Take No Prisoners: The Battle Plan for Defeating the Left.

David Horowitz Interview with Dave Rubin (VIDEO)

I have friends who despise David Horowitz. He's said to be totalitarian himself. But there's nobody else, for me, who better expose the evil and hatred of the left, and thus I'll always love the guy.

Here's his latest book, at Amazon, Big Agenda: President Trump’s Plan to Save America.

And watch, "David Horowitz on Communism, Marxism, and the Black Panther Party":

Trump Administration Said to Apologize to U.K. Over Spying Claims

At the Los Angeles Times, "Trump's unsubstantiated claim that Obama spied on him has now entangled — and upset — Great Britain."

This was the big thing on CNN this morning, which I had on for a while while grading essays:



Still more, at Memeorandum, "White House apologizes to British government over spying claims."

Once Called a Hoax, Vallejo Kidnapping Leads to Prison

At the Los Angeles Times, "Harvard-educated former attorney sentenced to 40 years in prison for bizarre Vallejo kidnapping":

Harvard-educated man sentenced to 40 years for bizarre Vallejo kidnapping police had called hoax https://t.co/cVmFeM9NYn @brittny_mejia

— Hailey Branson-Potts (@haileybranson) March 17, 2017

It had been nearly two years since Denise Huskins had been in the same room as the man who kidnapped her in the early morning darkness.

Standing at a podium in a Sacramento courthouse, she faced him. Then she turned her words against the man — a Harvard-educated former attorney — who had bound, drugged and raped her twice.

“Now we meet face to face, eye to eye,” Huskins told Matthew Muller. “I’m Denise Huskins, the woman behind the blindfold.”

Huskins’ family and friends grew teary eyed as she described her pain after Muller kidnapped her on March 23, 2015, and after the Vallejo Police Department, at one point, publicly portrayed the case as a hoax.

In an emotional scene, Huskins asked that Muller be sentenced to life in prison.

“I know, without doubt or hesitation, that as long as he walks free, there will be more victims,” she said.

At the sentencing, Muller’s defense attorney argued for a 30-year sentence, citing his client’s struggles with mental illness.

“I’m sick with shame,” Muller said, adding that he would accept whatever sentence was imposed.

His parents sat with their younger son and their family and friends, as they waited in silence for U.S. District Court Judge Troy L. Nunley to hand down his sentence:

Forty years in prison.

The kidnapping took place before dawn as Huskins and her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, slept in the master bedroom of his home on Mare Island. The couple awoke to find a stranger standing in the room.

Using a stun gun and a water pistol made to look like a gun, Muller ordered the couple to lie still while he bound and blindfolded them and gave them a sleep-inducing liquid, prosecutors said. A recorded message played over headsets, threatening electric shock if the couple did not comply with his orders.

Muller placed Huskins in the trunk of Quinn’s 2000 Toyota Camry and moved her to the trunk of another car before driving her to his family’s South Lake Tahoe home...

Keep reading.

Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest

*BUMPED.*

I picked up a copy.

It's at my beside. Indeed, I've read the preface to the new edition. She's a energetic writer who's endlessly pleased by the publication of her book. It changed her life. She's got few regrets.

She became something of a public intellectual too.

At Amazon, Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West.

Cas Mudde and Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser, Populism

Following-up, "Dutch Election Sows (Shows) Extreme Political Fragmentation."

At Amazon, Cas Mudde and Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser, Populism: A Very Short Introduction.

Dutch Election Sows (Shows) Extreme Political Fragmentation

From Cas Muddle, an excellent scholar, at NYT:

MY take on Dutch elections. Headline by @nytimes doesn't really summarize different points made in it. #TK17 🇳🇱 https://t.co/9ZmoHAC936

— Cas Mudde (@CasMudde) March 16, 2017

The parliamentary election in the Netherlands on Wednesday was predicted to be the next populist show of strength after the Brexit referendum and Donald Trump’s election. The Dutch would be the first of a number of European countries to succumb to the right-wing populists’ siren songs in 2017, with the French not far behind.

It didn’t work out that way.

Geert Wilders, who is all too often described as a bleach blond or referred to as “the Dutch Trump,” did not defeat the conservative prime minister, Mark Rutte. In fact, he didn’t come close.

With more than 95 percent of the vote counted, Mr. Rutte’s People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, or V.V.D., came first with 21.2 percent of the vote, compared to Mr. Wilders’s Party for Freedom, which took only 13.1 percent. Mr. Wilders barely improved on his margin in the 2012 election (where he took 10.1 percent) and failed to do as well as he did in 2010 (where he got 15.5 percent of the vote).

The real story in Dutch politics isn’t Mr. Wilders’s rise, it is the unprecedented fragmentation of the political system. Together, Mr. Rutte’s and Mr. Wilders’s parties look set to make up only 33 percent of the Parliament, with 11 more political parties constituting the rest. This splintering of Dutch politics is making effective governance of the country increasingly impossible.

While previous Parliaments have counted 14 or more factions, what has changed is the relative size of the parties. In 1986, the top three parties together won 85 percent of the vote. In 2003, it was down to 74 percent. Today it is just around 45 percent.

Because of its proportional representation system of voting, the Netherlands is an extreme case. But the trends are similar across Western Europe: The main center-right and center-left parties are shrinking, smaller parties are growing and unstable coalition politics are becoming the norm. There are many reasons for this — from secularization to deindustrialization to the emergence of new political issues, like the environment or immigration.

The consequences have been painfully visible across Europe for some time. It took Belgium 541 days to form a government after its 2010 election. Both Greece and Spain were in recent years forced to hold second elections after the first Parliaments failed to form coalitions. In the Netherlands, forming a government is not quite as difficult, but the next one will most likely be a coalition of four to six parties.

If the Party for Freedom is excluded — and almost all parties have pledged that they will refuse to serve in a coalition with Mr. Wilders — the government will probably consist of five or six medium-size parties that span almost the entire political spectrum. Given that the conservative V.V.D. and the Christian Democratic Appeal are ideologically closer to the Party for Freedom than they are to, for example, the Green Left party with which they will be governing, the government will be rightly perceived as an anti-Wilders coalition.

This will play right into Mr. Wilders’s hands. He has long argued that the Netherlands’ political parties are all the same. Being the leader of the largest opposition party against an internally divided, weak “anti-Wilders” coalition is undoubtedly his second most desired outcome of the elections — after, of course, winning an outright majority of the votes.

The only way to break this vicious circle is for the parties in government to come together to support a positive program, one that justifies their cooperation and their decision to exclude Mr. Wilders...

Why Trump is Wise to Refer to 'Radical Islamic Terrorism' (VIDEO)

Here's Robert Spencer:

Shop Today

Okay, I've got to hop in the shower and get ready for work.

I figured out what happened on my *bumped* posts last night: I had the wrong date, the 13th instead of the 14th, so the posts wouldn't bump up to the top of the blog. My bad. I was fatigued from work and I thought the posts were from yesterday and not the day before. In any case, at least Blogger's not all "hinky" after all.

Until tonight, Shop Deals at Amazon.

Here's one, Save on Dyson AM05 Hot + Cool Fan Heater (Certified Refurbished).

BONUS: Carol Anderson, White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide.

How a Selfie of White Neighbors Jogging in Historically Black Leimert Park Reveals the Simmering Tensions on the Places We Call Home

This shouldn't be a thing, but then, leftists are the biggest racists.

At the Los Angeles Times.