So long, Viktor Orbán!
Looks like almost nobody was sorry to see Mr. Orbán sent packing by voters yesterday, least of all in Hungary where he spent the previous 16 years creating a much-imitated template of a creeping far-right takeover of democratic institutions.
That “almost” in the previous sentence is doing a lot of work, obviously. There were bound to have been plenty of gloomy faces yesterday at the Munich headquarters of the misnamed International Democracy Union, the neoliberal internationale where another former prime minister, Stephen Harper, holds court.
Nowadays Mr. Harper also chairs the Crown corporation that manages the pensions for a lot of Albertans, which is something you should worry about if you’re an Alberta public employee, or merely an Albertan in the event, God help us, that the United Conservative Party gets its paws on our Canada Pension Plan savings. But I digress.
A couple of years ago, Mr. Harper and Mr. Orbán could be found trading mutually admiring tweets about, in Mr. Harper’s words at the time, “the importance of centre-right parties strengthening their collaboration.” As everyone in that public correspondence understood, there was nothing very centrist about Mr. Orbán’s Fidesz party, or for that matter many other parties in the IDU.
But Fidesz’s creep toward authoritarianism was just fine with Mr. Harper, as long as Mr. Orbán could be persuaded to be a little more open to the European Union funding Ukraine’s fight against Russia.
Without a doubt there were even longer faces yesterday in the White House, what’s left of it, in Washington D.C., where, presumably, the nearly 80-year-old president of the United States will soon be rage tweeting about Mr. Orbán’s defeat, if he isn’t already.
As geopolitically alert readers are undoubtedly aware, Donald J. Trump has been posting on his personal social media platform that he very much wanted to see Mr. Orbán re-elected. “My Administration stands ready to use the full Economic Might of the United States to strengthen Hungary’s Economy, as we have done for our Great Allies in the past, if Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and the Hungarian People ever need it,” he said last Friday. “We are excited to invest in the future Prosperity that will be generated by Orbán’s continued Leadership!”
Mr. Trump even sent his vice-president, the hapless JD Vance, to try to save Mr. Orbán. Mr. Vance instead seems to have delivered the kiss of political death on behalf of the president.
Given all that, Mr. Trump can be assumed to be very unhappy about the outcome of the Hungarian election, at least for as long as he remembers it.
Mr. Orbán is likely to be replaced as prime minister by someone ironically named Péter Magyar – which in translation might sound a little like “Prime Minister Mark Canadian” – who has his own history of sucking up to Mr. Trump on social media. But what the hell, sometimes a change is as good as a rest, and Mr. Magyar must by now be as aware as anyone that adopting the Mr. Trump’s Orbán-inspired MAGA playbook doesn’t seem to be working as well as it used to.
So we can presumably assume that Magyar MAGA, at least as far as rhetoric and appearances go, is a thing of the past.
But this brings me to the buried lead of this post, which is that nowadays, politicians who hitch their wagons to Mr. Trump’s falling star need to be aware that this is starting to look like a high-risk strategy, as Hungarian voters demonstrated yesterday.
Consider poor Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Conservative Party of Canada who for months we all gloomily assumed was our unpleasant fate to have as prime minister.
Mr. Poilievre’s election strategy was torn from the pages of the MAGA playbook, which didn’t play as well once Mr. Trump started calling Canada the 51st State and had his family and cabinet members start boosting Alberta separation on social media.
So what was Mr. Poilievre – who had based his strategy for several years on being the Antitrudeau – going to do in the face of Mr. Trump’s open contempt for Canada and Canadians? Change? Pivot? Not a chance! Not that guy.
Mr. Poilievre won’t change or he can’t change. Even the pleas of The National Post can’t get him to moderate his tone. It’s just not in him.
So now he sits, watching his caucus members break for the Liberal benches. Will this play out like bankruptcy: Slowly at first, then suddenly all at once? It certainly looks as if Mr. Carney won’t have to worry about calling another election till 2029. Today’s three by-elections will probably confirm this.
There are other examples of politicians who have adopted the MAGA playbook and fared not so well.
Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, voted out in an election 2022. In response, his supporters stormed the presidential palace, the Supreme Court and the Congress in Brasilia on Jan. 8, 2023. Sound familiar? He was sentenced to 27 years in jail. He’s currently under house arrest. Mr. Trump’s frantic threats and rage posts haven’t sprung him.
Former Australian Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, whose Liberal party was favoured to win a federal election in May 2025. Too much MAGA, though, and Labour got a pass and returned to power. Like Mr. Poilievre, Mr. Dutton even lost his own seat.
OK, this isn’t overwhelming evidence has acquired a reverse Midas touch. But it certainly suggests a trend. We await with great interest the results of the U.S. midterm elections in November – if they’re allowed to happen. The auguries suggest that may turn out to be the end of MAGA, at least until it resurrects itself under a new label.
Will Reform U.K. Leader Nigel Farage continue to channel Donald Trump, now that there are signs MAGA is no longer a sure winner, even in Airstrip One?
And what about our very own Danielle Smith here in Wild Rose Country? She has made Mr. Trump her political hero and her party is now clearly dominated by MAGA zealots, Christian nationalists, and outright separatists. Trump-style corruption appears widespread. There are signs Texas-style gerrymandering is waiting in the wings.
Will Ms. Smith be able to cut her ties to Trumpism, or can Wild Rose MAGA buck the trend? I don’t know the answers to those questions, but I have a feeling Ms. Smith’s ride may turn out to be a little bumpier than her polls right now suggest.
