Moderate conservative cautions Orbán against negative campaign
September 24th, 2013A conservative blogger claims that Orbán could be “Hungary’s Merkel” if he could only show restraint and fashion his party as a “force for stability”.
On Mos Maiorum, Ferenc Horkay-Hörcher suggests that Prime Minister Orbán had two ideas in mind when he sent a video-message to Angela Merkel via a senior Fidesz politician on election night in Germany. Firstly, he was trying to patch up the rather battered German-Hungarian relations, and secondly he intended to learn the secrets of success. (In his message, accompanied by Brahms’s Hungarian Dances performed by a Gypsy orchestra, the Prime Minister warmly welcomed the victory of the German Christian Democrats in Sunday’s elections, addressing the German Chancellor “Dear Angela”.) Horkay-Hörcher contrasts Merkel’s political style with Orbán’s, emphasizing that the key to Merkel’s success is her calm – to others, bland – demeanour, and her ability to understand the aspirations of her compatriots. Orbán still believes in the power of a negative campaign, he writes, even though “the 2014 elections have already been won as a result of the utility tariff cuts”. Orbán should follow the example of the German chancellor, he concludes, and present the image of a stable, centrist force that is willing to reach out to its moderate critics and “harness the positive energies of Hungary,” such as creativity, wit and a willingness to compromise.