The defeat of Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, should deliver a sharp jolt to one of America’s two major political parties. Oddly, it’s not the Republicans, deeply invested though they were in Orbán as a fellow traveler. There is no question that Orbán’s downfall is a loss for MAGA-style politics and a reminder that even a developed system of so-called “illiberal democracy” has its limits. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance committed personal credibility and political capital to sustaining Orbán-ism, including by dispatching Vance to campaign for the premier in the final days of the election. The outcome is a setback for the White House and a humiliation for its best friend in Europe. But the sharpest message from Budapest should be for the Democrats, strange as that may sound. That is because Orbán’s ouster represents a new triumph for a particular brand of disruptive politics: one defined by reformist candidates who launch new parties and blow up old ones, winning elections by rendering traditional political structures obsolete. Hungary's Peter Magyar, the leader of the anti-Orbán Tisza party, is the latest victor in this mold. There is no equivalent figure among Trump's American opponents. This is not just the electoral flavor of the moment in Hungary, an ex-Communist country with a population roughly the size of New Jersey’s — hardly a bellwether for the American electorate. Instead, Magyar joins an eclectic club of successful insurgents scattered from Paris and Rome and Ottawa to Buenos Aires and Seoul and Washington. There is no ideological coherence to this group. It includes a technocratic former central banker, a conglomerate-bashing former labor lawyer, a chainsaw-wielding libertarian activist and a tariff-obsessed hotel developer-turned-reality TV star. Magyar, 45, was an obscure midlevel official in Orbán’s party before turning apostate in a spectacular defection, armed with a damning secret recording of his spouse who served in Orbán’s government. What these politicians have in common is a path to power. And it is one that Democrats have resisted for a decade since Trump became the dominant figure in American politics, killing off the traditional Republican Party along the way. Since then, Democrats have largely hewed to the command-and-control mindset that gave them Hillary Clinton’s coronation in 2016, the party’s abrupt flight to safety with Joe Biden in 2020 and the anointment of Kamala Harris in 2024 without even the pretense of a contested nomination. At least… [TheTopNews] Read More.
3 weeks ago
