Why are conservatives always trying to save their enemies?

Leftists around the world are jubilant at the downfall of Sarko L' Américain, as the Socialist Francois Hollande decisively defeated the "center-right" Nicolas Sarkozy for the presidency of the French Republic. The supposed conservatives have no one to blame but themselves. Sarkozy's demise is the logical consequence of the forced austerity he and German Chancellor Angela Merkel shoved down their peoples' throats in order to maintain the euro, whatever the cost.

At a time when mass Islamic immigration is transforming the Western character of the continent, self-government has been taken away and transferred to an increasingly autocratic European Union and unemployment is skyrocketing in southern Europe, supposed conservatives have taken the suicidal position of lining up with the very bankers, bureaucrats and financiers that created the crisis. The European people have taken to the streets, rising against the disaster their unelected left-wing masters in Brussels have imposed on them. Incredibly, the so-called right wing rides to the rescue of the Establishment, working to stamp down the populist uprising instead of leading it.

The results are predictable. The French center-right has now collapsed. The Dutch government has fallen, another casualty of the austerity debate that led to the defeat of Silvio Berlusconi in Italy. The popularity of the conservative government in Spain is plummeting, with left wingers and outright Communist Party members seizing control of regional parliaments. Even Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats are on the ropes.

This should sound familiar. During the 2008 election, John McCain received a populist boost from nominating Sarah Palin and energizing the conservative base. Even fighting against the headwinds of a despised Republican incumbent, an unpopular war, an economic collapse and a partisan media slavishly devoted to electing Barack Obama, McCain was still amazingly competitive. Then, incredibly, he stopped his campaign in order to use hundreds of billions of tax dollars to bail out Wall Street financiers. As Pat Buchanan put it, "The Establishment's Man had come to save the Establishment."

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The result is that Barack Obama and the finance team he recruited from his top campaign donor, Goldman Sachs, somehow claimed the mantle of reform. Fleeing in terror from issues of immigration, affirmative action, Obama's radical past, and social conservatism, McCain ran a respectable, media-approved campaign and was trounced.

It remains to be seen whether presumptive nominee Mitt Romney will make the same mistake.

However, we can already see the results of that approach in Europe. The respectable European center-right has been all but wiped out. The future of European conservatism doesn't belong to those who want to tinker with European Union's bureaucratic monstrosity, but the right opposition waiting to collapse the whole rotten edifice. In Hungary, Denmark, Austria, Switzerland and in the other suppressed nations of the EUSSR, new parties are challenging the tired establishment of the so-called center-right.

Now, even in the heart of Western Europe, this new force is taking its rightful place. In France, Marine Le Pen and her reformed Front National are the real victors now that Sarkozy's phony conservatism is discredited. With a record showing in this past election, the FN is ready to take its deserved position as the only real opposition in France.

In Holland, it was the free-speech champion and Shariah opponent Geert Wilders who brought down the "conservative" government by refusing to go along with an austerity program. It doesn't make sense, Wilders observed, "to suffer for the sake of the dictators in Brussels."

The left's triumph will be short-lived, because after all the talk of workers' rights and lavish spending, they will have to march to the orders of those dictators. After all, fundamentally, the European Union is their creation, set up according to their rules, ruled by their political class, and dedicated to their objectives of stamping out cultural conservatism and national independence. The European nations cannot recover from their fiscal crisis without abolishing the euro and letting each nation set policies to fit their own situation. The political class will not allow that because it gets in the way of their cultural objectives, and so the crisis will continue indefinitely.

The system is breaking down, and the only answer the Europeans have is the newly emerging authentic right represented by Le Pen, Wilders and others. Insofar as Europe has a future, it belongs to an authentic conservatism that defends national independence and cultural identity.

America will soon face these same challenges, as our system has become completely incapable of dealing with runaway entitlements, mass illegal immigration, high unemployment, soaring debt and ever increasing government power.

Republicans have a choice between being right and being respectable. If Romney tells us that the path to prosperity is defending the interests of financiers like George Soros, a tax cut for Lady Gaga and Michael Bloomberg, and amnesty for illegals to "help the economy," than let him join Sarkozy.

Authentic conservatism doesn't mean a more efficiently run left-wing government. It means conserving what is worth conserving and letting the leftists suffer the consequences of their own failures.