If Republicans Want To Win the White House in 2024, They Could Look to Greece

ATHENS — “Seismic,” a word with Greek roots, was the laconic headline seen on many newspapers here after snap parliamentary elections in May that saw the center-right New Democracy party of the prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, trounce his main opposition on the left. A little more than a month later, landslide is how most Greeks describe a conservative triumph in the second round. Following a hotly anticipated second round of voting on Sunday, Mr. Mitsotakis clinched a second four-year term by a record margin, scooping up more than 40 percent of the vote. In doing so he blew rival left-wing Syriza and its charismatic leader, Alexis Tsipras, a former prime minister, out of the water. Syriza took less than 18 percent of the electoral pie, which came as a shock to many in a country that still has a strong socialist ethos and robust communist party. Pasok, the mainstream socialist party, fared well, securing 32 seats in parliament, but this election means farewell to Mr. Tsipras for the foreseeable future as a force of any meaningful power or influence. In effect, Mr. Mitsotakis crushed the left. How did he do it? The secret combination, as it were, was a mix of sound, pro-business economic policy, smart campaigning, and consistent messaging. That formula saw Mr. Mitsotakis emerge unscathed after both scandal — a wiretapping case dubbed the Greek Watergate that implicated some in his administration — and a passenger train disaster on February 28 that underlined safety flaws in the Greek transportation infrastructure and brought thousands of protesters to the streets. Mr. Mitsotakis has also taken a tough line on illegal immigration, a stance that has resonated with a significant portion of the Greek population. Vocal opposition to illegal immigration is what catapulted three far-right parties into the government this week, each one crossing the 3 percent threshold necessary to enter parliament. The mainly liberal European press is having a field day with that, though for the time being parties like the Spartans and Greek Solution will have no more than fringe roles in the civic discourse. That is partly because unlike in America, which shares a vast border with Mexico, in Greece — with some notable exceptions such as the short land border with Turkey along with Evros River in the country’s north — the question of illegal immigration is largely a saga of drama, and sometimes tragedy, at sea. The other reason is that many Greeks still associate the mainstream left-wing party with the years of financial crisis. Mr. Tsipras governed between 2015 and 2019, when Greece was in a de facto state of receivership to the EU. He campaigned on ending austerity measures, but once in power caved to Brussels and put in place even more. It would be facile to say that Mr. Mitsotakis by contrast has been all business, but his campaign platform absolutely prioritized the economy. And it has rebounded, despite some hiccups. By some estimates, Greece’s GDP has grown by three times in the period between 2019 and 2022 versus the period between 2014 and 2018, to 1.8 percent from half of 1 percent. The EU average is currently 1.3 percent. Pledging to cutting taxes and boost private-sector incomes were also key parts of the New Democracy platform. In terms of platform, the New Democracy party is the closest approximation of America’s Republican Party. In the press, both the May and June rounds of the national elections were portrayed as throwdowns between Messrs. Tsipras and Mitsotakis. The latter is the Harvard-educated scion of a powerful Greek political dynasty and the two are famous sparring partners, regularly tearing into each other on the parliament floor. In reality, the populace wanted to see action steps to tackle things like the cost-of-living crisis, which like everywhere in Europe has been exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. In his speeches and in social media, Mr. Mitsotakis hammered away at his plans to keep the economy flying high. Mr. Tsipras, though, was perceived as sticking more to characteristic left-wing bombast. He failed to deliver on the details. Mr. Mitsotakis’s team also did the better job of the two in leveraging social media, including TikTok, which helped humanize both him and his party.It is true that Nikos Androulakis, leader of the Pasok socialist party, which scooped up 32 seats in parliament, criticized New Democracy under Mr. Mitsotakis’s stewardship as “an arrogant clientelist government whose every choice deconstructs the welfare state on a daily basis.” Could a socialist party head be expected to say anything different? Now, though, thanks to Instagram but especially TikTok, a new generation of voters has images of the 55-year-old Mr. Mitsotakis with sleeves rolled up and making short running commentaries from the back seat of a car speeding to an airport or on the way to delivering a campaign speech. Many of his cabinet members also used social media to great effect. Despite Greece’s plethora of political parties, months of campaigning essentially reduced the field of viable candidates for the top position to two, and in the home stretch to one. Americans with their two major parties have the burden of narrowing the playing field in the months to come — the danger is that in doing so there could be erosion of the momentum of the party that makes more political sense for the country as a whole, and that is not the Democrats. But landslides are not impossible. For clues as to how party and personality can sometimes be fused for maximum impact at the ballot box, it might not be a bad idea for some wags at Washington to take a look at what just happened at Athens.

If Republicans Want To Win the White House in 2024, They Could Look to Greece

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