by Tom Luongo, Tom Luongo:

There’s no crying in baseball!”
— A League of Their Own

The Great Realignment is coming to Europe next year.  All the writing is on the wall.

This summer saw German Chancellor Angela Merkel survive a leadership challenge by her coalition partner Horst Seehofer over her immigration policy.

She needs political wins to maintain her hold on power.  Standing firm against President Trump on the Nordstream 2 pipeline and having a cordial summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin is a good start.

Because most of Europe is tired of 1) Germany setting policy for the entire EU and 2) anti-Russian sanctions killing their trade.

But week-long protests in the Saxony town of Chemnitz over the stabbing of a local man are dogging her.  Germany’s polling numbers continue ebbing away from Merkel.

The more she is weakened the more emboldened her opposition becomes.

Cue Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini and Hungarian President Viktor Orban. They met to openly strategize over ending open migration into the EU.  On the surface Italy and Hungary seem at odds on this issue.

Italy wants its borders closed and its migrants distributed throughout Europe.

Hungary steadfastly refuses to take even one migrant.

This dichotomy is what the European media and politicians think will keep these two rising titans in conflict.

But, as Mike Shedlock pointed out recently at Townhall.com, these two men have bigger goals which they are in total agreement on — securing their borders to preserve their cultural and national identities.

That’s why Salvini is calling for “A League of Leagues” across Europe.  He will succeed.

This is the guy who successfully rebranded the secessionist Northern League into the MIGA party – Make Italy Great Again. 

Then he and Five Star Movement leader Luigi Di Maio navigated the Italian Swamp to form a government experts said couldn’t work, while simultaneously neutering establishment stalking horse Silvio Berlusconi.

Thanks to Salvini’s strategic genius Italian politics will never be the same again.  His League now polls around 30%, which bodes well for it in next year’s European Parliamentary Elections.

Because now his sights are MEGA – Make Europe Great Again.

The quisling European media pounce breathlessly whenever there is a perceived difference of opinion between Salvini and Di Maio, portraying the coalition as weak and tenuous.

Talks between Orban and Salvini were reported alongside Di Maio’s call for migrant burden sharing across the EU.  This is to sow discord where there is none.

The two are in lock-step in confronting Brussels over its IMF-backed austerity program.  They rightly see it as destroying Italy’s economy and its culture.  The program is no different than the one imposed on Greece and is destroying Argentina again, whose currency imploded last week.

They hope this wave of populism sweeping Europe is just a tantrum that eventually will end in tears.

But, there’s no crying in power politics.  

Neither Salvini nor Orban are weak men given to fits of doubt.  And their forming an alliance here is bigger than grandstanding on immigration policy.

With Merkel weak they will isolate French President Emmanuel Macron, make him their nemesis and remake the European Parliament after next year’s elections.

Because the real goal is to take control of the European Commission Presidency, ousting the odious Jean-Claude Juncker.

A “League of Leagues” would unite sovereigntist parties across Europe under one party in the European Parliament.  The European People’s Party rules alongside the Social Democrats in a German-style grand coalition that stands for nothing except more centralized control by EU technocrats.

Like Juncker.

Salvini and Orban want other the Visigrad countries as well as Austria to form the basis for this coalition.

Is it enough?  The 800 lb. Gorilla in this room is Alternative for Germany (AfD).  The official opposition party in the Bundestag, AfD will pick up seats in the European Parliament where they currently have just one.

They are the wild card in this gambit by Salvini and Orban.

As I’ve discussed in the past, AfD is in the process of “Crossing the Chasm” from minor party to major one.  The latest polls, now nearly a month old, have AfD polling between 16 and 18% nationally.

If AfD has a League-like surge from the mid-teens to 30% support, Merkel’s government will fall.

AfD will enter the EU parliament with a tailwind to see Salvini and Orban’s wish fulfilled.
This is why the protests in Chemnitz are important.  It’s why AfD’s rise in CSU-dominated Bavaria is so important.

Public frustration with immigrant violence could shift the German electorate between now and May’s elections that far as more and more Germans embrace local community pride.

Then there’s the Trump Factor.

The harder Donald Trump pushes EU leadership to actually lead at home the more they are exposed as weak fools.  Despite Juncker, Merkel and Macron talking a good game, European companies are abandoning their business with Iran over Trump pulling the U.S. out of the JCPOA.

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