Rutte's Dutch Win Was Narrow, but Europe Is Still in Denial about How to Survive -- So Are Some US Judges

Two stories dominated the news on Thursday -- the Dutch election results and the Hawaii federal judge's nationwide temporary restraining order on President Trump's Executive Order for an immigration pause. In important ways, the two events are related. • • • DUTCH ELECTION RESULTS. As the UK Telegraph put it : "Geert Wilders’s promise to bring a populist “revolution” to Europe fell flat on Wednesday night after his anti-immigrant Party for Freedom (VVF) failed to live up to supporters’ expectations in a closely-watched Dutch general election." European news on Thursday was full of self-congratulations, none more ridiculously jubilant than that of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's chief of staff, Peter Altmaier : "The Netherlands, oh the Netherlands you are a champion!.....Congratulations on this great result." European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker wasn't far behind, congratulating Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte on his election victory, calling the result which disappointed anti-immigration eurosceptics "an inspiration for many. The people of the Netherlands voted overwhelmingly for the values Europe stands for: free and tolerant societies in a prosperous Europe. Let us build a strong Europe together." • To put this EU euphoria into perspective, we are talking about the center-right VVD led by Mark Rutte, who has been prime minister since 2010 -- that is two parliamentary terms, the first lasting from 2010 to 2012 and ending in a budget crisis -- taking 21% of the popular vote vs the far-right nationalist populist VVF led by Geert Wilders that was just created in 2004 garnering 13% of the popular vote. On Wednesday, Rutte and his VVD lost 8 of their 41 seats in parliament, dropping from 41 to 33, while Wilders gained 4 seats, rising form 16 to 20. • This occurred in a system under which the lower house of the Dutch legislature, the House of Representatives, is elected by a national party-list system of proportional representation. There is no threshold for getting a seat, making it possible for a party to get a seat with only two-thirds % of the vote -- roughly one seat for every 60,000 votes. Since this system was implemented in 1918, no party has even approached the seats needed for an outright majority. • • • EU REACTION TO THE DUTCH RESULTS WAS SWIFT. The possibility that the populist firebrand Geert Wilders could become the largest party in the Dutch parliament had terrified Europe’s political establishment, which feared yet further destabilization following the UK vote for Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. Even though Rutte's total was 8 seats below 2012, European politicians and media are hailing the "clear" vote in favor of his ruling VVD party, calling it a victory for the EU establishment seeking to reboot the European Union after Brexit. • French President Francois Hollande congratulated Rutte for his election success and his "clear victory against extremism. The values of openness, respect for others, and a faith in Europe's future are the only true response to the nationalist impulses and isolationism that are shaking the world." For Hollande, forced out of running for a second term by his own Socialist Party, was most likely thinking of the April 23 presidential election in France, and hoping out lous that far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who wants to leave the EU and sharply curb immigration, will fail to make her expected strong showing. • Paolo Gentiloni, the Italian prime minister, said the “anti-EU right has lost the elections” and urged supporters to work to “revitalise the Union.” • Martin Schulz, a center-left candidate for German chancellor next August, who said he was “relieved” at the result. • Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s Brexit negotiator, said it had demonstrated that “optimism prevailed.” • With a resounding 81% turnout, the highest in 30 years, the Dutch were voting in what has been called a test of whether the Dutch want to end decades of liberalism and choose a nationalist, anti-immigrant path. In the final days of the campaign, Rutte warned of “chaos” if Wilders was allowed into government, urging Dutch voters to “make a point” to the world by rejecting Wilders' anti-immigration agenda. His impassioned pleas for tolerance came at the end of a bitter campaign and a ferocious diplomatic row with Turkey that raised the temperature of the immigration debate. • Rutte welcomed the result, telling a crowd of jubilant supporters : “This was a festival for democracy today, with rows of people at voting stations. It is also an evening where the Netherlands, after Brexit and the American elections, has said ‘ho’ to the wrong sort of populism. Now it’s important to bring our country together and form a stable government." • Maurice de Hond, a leading Dutch pollster, said of Rutte’s strong showing : “His performance on Turkey saved the day for him.” Bert van den Braak, a leading Dutch political historian, said that Wilders had probably missed the key momentum built up by the 2016 migrant crisis, which has since been brought under control thanks to a deal between the EU and Turkey, adding : "He also lost credibility by almost not taking part in debates. And the election of Trump and Brexit could also have been in the minds of voters,”noting that despite fears over the rise of populism, it was centrist parties who would dominate the new parliament. • After the election, Wilders was defiant, thanking his supporters as the results came in, and noting that his 20 seats represented a 5-seat gain from 2012 -- described in propagandist fashion by European media as a marginal success at less than half the 41 seats Wilders was slated to win at the height of his poll popularity in January 2016. Wilders saw things differently, tweeting : “VVF-voters, thank you! We have won seats! The first win is in. And Rutte is far from rid of me!!” • • • WHAT'S AHEAD FOR EUROPE? Rutte, who is now poised for a third term as prime minister, said : "We want to stick to the course we have - safe and stable and prosperous." But, Rutte would do well to listen to Wilders. So would Chancellor Merkel, who said in a speech on Thursday morning : "The Netherlands are our partners, friends, neighbors. Therefore I was very happy that a high turnout led to a very pro-European result, a clear signal. And that after days in which the Netherlands had to tolerate accusations and reproaches from Turkey which are totally unacceptable...It was a good day for democracy." • If anything can be gleaned from the Dutch general election, it was that there is a collapse of support for mainstream parties such as Rutte's center-conservative VVD and their coalition partners, Labour, but not enough to hand victory to a young and untested insurgent movement like Geert Wilders’s Party for Freedom, VVF. But, despite Rutte’s VVD remaining the largest party, the election produced a dramatic change in fortune for the traditional parties, which beyond a five-point drop for the conservatives, saw the Labour Party crash from 26 to 6 points. The shift means the left-wing party, which has been a key member of the ruling coalition and controlled many government ministries, will likely lose around three-quarters of their members of parliament. These mainstream party drops have been the result of the growing importance of smaller, new partiesn boosted by European voter rejection of the non-elected EU elite leadership's continued open border multicultural agenda that flies in the face of the xishes of averave Europeans. There is also a visible surge that boosted the Green-Left party, set to pick up ten extra seats out of the wreckage of the Labour party. • But, there was another notable achievement from the Denk (‘Think’ Party), founded by Turkish-origin former Labour politicians who launched the movement as Europe’s first "by-migrants-for-migrants" party. Denk is set to take three parliamentary seats, a success that may inspire migrants in other European nations. That will only add to the urgency felt by the populist movement in Europe that seeks to curtail immigration and return national cultures to their former majority position in European politics. Freezing Wilders out of the governing coalition after his party finished second in the number of MPs in the house may make centrist parties desperate to keep him out of power feel good. But it will not solve the European problem. Every country in the EU has an anti-immigration party because voters are fed up with govenrments and the EU tellign them they should take as many non-European refugees and migrants as appear on their doorstep. It is a reaction largely based on the growing number of Moslem enclaves that refuse to adapt to European culture, supported by EU leaders who enforce their accommodation. This is strongly offered as the real reason Britons voted for Brexit. If the EU leadership would openly discuss the issue instead of burying it under political correctness, they would see that there is trouble brewing -- Hungary, Austria and Poland are in revolt about enforced immigrantion quota policies; Marine Le Pen is leading the French presidential polls, although she, like Wilders, will very likely be defeated in the second round of voting; Spain is so divided that it cannot form a stable govenrment; and Greece is the poster child for the ruthless EU leadership decisions that can quickly ruin any country objecting to its decrees. Britain has left; Poland would like to but is being threatened with sanctions by the EU; Hungary is in open defiance of EU immigration policies; and the daily terrorist attacks on Europeans just trying to live their lives goes on, often unreported. • European politicians may celebrate their Dutch victory, but the war is far from over. • • • TRUMP'S EXECUTIVE ORDER ON IMMIGRATION. In a ruling issued on Wednesday afternoon, a federal judge, who is an Obama appointee, prevented the President of the United States from enforcing his own EO to protect the nation from migrants from terror-riddled countries. The judge made his temporary restraining order (TRO) nationwide, thus preventing every other judge and every other state from following the President’s order, making himself a one-man Supreme Court and substitute President. The judge's ruling suggests that he believes that American universities and immigrants living here can prohibit America from ever limiting immigration from Moslem-heavy countries, in effect stating that the First Amendment gives Moslem-dominant nations a right of immigration to America. The judge suggested Trump’s political campaign undermined the legal and constitutional authority of his Executive Order. “Are you saying we close our eyes to the sequence of statements before this?” the judge asked the government lawyers during the hearing, according to the New York Times. In his order, the judge said his order was justified by campaign statements, this Trump statement from a CNN interview in March 2016 : “But there’s a tremendous hatred. And we have to be very vigilant. We have to be very careful. And we can’t allow people coming into this country who have this hatred of the United States. . . [a]nd of people that are not Moslem.” The government's national security argument for curbs on refugees was also dismissed by the judge, despite numerous cases in which Moslem refugees, immigrants, and visitors from Moslem countries have attacked or killed Americans since 2001. “Any reasonable, objective observer would conclude, as does the Court for purposes of the instant Motion for TRO, that the stated secular [national security] purpose of the Executive Order is, at the very least, “secondary to a religious objective” of temporarily suspending the entry of Moslems,” the judge declared. The Washington Post reports that the judge also agreed with the lawyers who argued that the immigrant citizen Moslem cleric has the right to sue the federal government for visas to allow his relatives to live in the United States. According to the WP, a lawyer for the immigrant cleric said “Dr. [Ismail ] Elshikh certainly has standing [to sue the government] in this case. He, along with all of the Moslem residents in Hawaii face higher hurdles to see family because of religious faith … It is not merely a harm to the Moslem residents of the state of Hawaii, but also is a harm to the United States as a whole and is against the First Amendment itself.” • • • A THOROUGHLY WRONG DECISION. Liberal law professors such as Turley and Dershowitz noted that Trump should win at the Supreme Court against the first 9th Circuit decision that has now been set aside for the new Trump EO. Why? Breitbart's Robert Barnes provides answers. • Nationwide injunctions for non-party plaintiffs are not permitted to district court judges, who should not overrule other judges or dictate his opinions on the whole nation. The Supreme Court warned against issuing any relief not individually and specifically necessary to the plaintiffs before the court. Noting that “neither declaratory nor injunctive relief can directly interfere with enforcement of contested statutes or ordinances except with respect to the particular federal plaintiffs,” the Supreme Court warned against extending its reach beyond “the particular federal plaintiffs” in the case. The Supreme Court reversed a California judge’s order just like this Hawaii judge’s order -- imposing a national ban beyond his limited district jurisdiction of the parties before him. • There is no constitutional right to a visa or a right of immigration or emigration. Key Supreme Court decisions affirm that aliens “outside the country receive no constitutional protection.” The Supreme Court repeatedly held an alien seeking initial admission to the United States “requests a privilege, and has no constitutional rights regarding his application, for the power to admit or exclude aliens is a sovereign prerogative.” Thus, the President “may shut out aliens” whenever the President determine such “entry would be prejudicial to the interests of the United States.” Congress authorized this presidential action -- 8 USC 1182. The actions of the President in respect of enforcing this law “are largely immune from judicial inquiry or interference.” This is because the Constitution entrusts “the power regulate immigration” exclusively “to the political branches of the Federal Government.” As the Supreme Court recently reiterated during Clinton’s presidency : judicial “deference to the Executive Branch is especially appropriate in the immigration context” given the “sensitive political functions that implicate questions of foreign relations.” • The First Amendment does not apply to foreign aliens. That is how every President for more than a century limited migrants based on ideology or statehood. That is why we were much more successful than Europe in limiting the anarchist-inspired violence that led Europe into World War I and in limiting communist internal sabotage. The Hawaii federal judge ruled that because the imam was Moslem and his would-be migrant visas wish-list of visitors came from Moslem-dominant nations, the First Amendment gave him a special right to bring whomever he wanted into the country, even from terror-riddled countries that the President recognized as a direct threat to peace. The First Amendment has never applied to a right of immigration of foreign aliens, nor does it compel religious favoritism toward Moslems. This is the Progressive interpretation of the Constitution, and it is as perilous to America's future if allowed to stand. As Breitbart said : "The Hawaii Obama judge didn’t interpret the Constitution; he rewrote it, usurping to himself the sole power to control borders, then delegated the exercise of that power to a Moslem imam and his free visa wish list. The judge dishonored the rule of law in his order and disrespected our legal traditions and governing legal authorities in his reasoning for it. He efftively declared himself king..." • TheHill early on Thursday morning broke the news that a second federal judge in Maryland has blocked parts of Trump’s revised travel ban. • President Trump during a rally in Tennessee Wednesday night vowed to fight the Hawaii judge’s ruling : "We're going to take our case as far as it needs to go, including all the way up to the Supreme Court. We're going to win. The danger is clear. The law is clear. The need for my executive order is clear." • • • DEAR READERS, President Trump is right, but perhaps even more important, Americans agree with him. A Politico/Morning Consult poll released on Wednesday shows 52% of voters approve of President Donald Trump’s job performance. Here is how the Politico/Morning Consult article on the poll put it : "The Politico/Morning Consult survey also shows more positive opinions of the job Trump is doing as President. In the new poll, 52% of voters approve of Trump’s job performance, more than the 43% who disapprove. But, on balance, most polls show more disapprove than approve of the job Trump is doing." If you have ever read a "grudging" reporting of a positive Trump story, this is it. But, the fact is there -- Trump is supported by 52% of American voters. • Americans, like Europeans, are tired of being told what they should do or think or say. Americans, like Europeans, are demanding to have their country back, free of terrorist acts, free of radical-Moslem agitation for sharia-based enclaves that reject Western culture while taking its largesse and often plotting its destruction, free of politicians and media whose Progressive globalist agenda is rejected by citizens browbeaten when they disagree. This is not a religious fight. It is not anti-Moslem. It is a political decision to take back their countries and cultures from their own politicians and media who tricked them into agreeing with fake openness and brotherhood pleas that were really smoke-screens for a Progressive takeover and destruction of Western civilization. Consider this -- European and American citizens have been relatively acquiescent about higher taxes, severe state interference in their daily lives, and the erasure of their religious and cultural traditions. These are all 'invisible' and so hard to fight against. But, when these Progressive policies -- that is what they are -- take the form of people who are 'visible' and reject those religious and cultural norms; the anger mounts more quickly because it has a concrete target. The lesson for governments is twofold : first, western political leaders should read the tea leaves and understand that their agenda is not going to be accepted by citizens who detest its visible results; and, second, the immigrants who are the visible evidence of the failure of politicians must accommodate their new home countries by assimilating, or they will bear the consequent angry manifestations of their new neighbors. American Progressive Democrats are now learning that lesson. Europe is still in denial. • And guess who was in Hawaii for a surprise visit just 48 hours before federal district judge Derrick Watson -- the Obama appointee -- blocked President Trump’s travel ban. Former President Obama -- did he scheme with the judge? The Honolulu Star reported that Obama “made an unannounced return to Hawaii Monday,” just three months after his last official holiday visit as President, arriving with a small entourage that included a Secret Service detail. Obama had dinner at the Noi Thai restaurant, just minutes away from the courthouse, and Obama was, “likely within 5 minutes of the judge’s house at one point on the drive over.” Evil never sleeps.