U.S. conservatives have long pointed to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban as proof that a Western leader can crack down on immigration, defy global institutions and wage war on \u201cwoke\u201d liberalism \u2013 and still win elections.
But as Hungary heads toward an April 12 parliamentary election, some of Orban\u2019s most enthusiastic admirers in the U.S., including President Donald Trump, are confronting a once-unthinkable prospect: after 16 years in power, Europe\u2019s champion of \u201cilliberal democracy\u201d could be voted out of office.
Defeat for Orban would reverberate well beyond Hungary, casting doubt on the durability of a political system \u2013 marked by hardline nationalism and an erosion of democratic checks \u2013 that some on the American right have touted as a blueprint for reshaping Western democracy.
It would also come as momentum appears to be slowing for some of Europe\u2019s far-right parties, with Trump\u2019s unpopularity increasingly seen as a liability among European voters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
U.S. conservatives have long pointed to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban as proof that a Western leader can crack down on immigration, defy global institutions and wage war on \u201cwoke\u201d liberalism \u2013 and still win elections.But as Hungary heads toward an April 12 parliamentary election, some of Orban\u2019s most enthusiastic admirers in the U.S., including […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n