Rest of World Would Vote Obama in Landslide, Except Pakistan.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

The rest of the world is not left-wing (nevermind your actual choice of words), that makes no sense whatsoever to say.
Rather, *part* of the issue here is that every Conservatism is slightly different and that almost every national subsort looks more right-wing from outside the country than inside it - they're all still fighting some battle (or else the left of that country isn't even fighting that battle) that's been put to rest elsewhere and isn't missed by anybody. It's part of the definition of Conservatism, really. You just get few polls about how Germans would vote in France, Brits would vote in Germany, Americans would vote in Britain etc.
And then America is a very big and (for a Western country) quite insular country. Yet its elections affect everybody outside. That exacerbates it.

Point of clarification as I'm not sure I understood this. Is this "battle" specific to the US or is that usage just to mean "battles" in general regardless of place? If it is latter, I'm not sure what you are referring to exactly. What battle do Irish conservatives fight than has been left behind in other parts of the world?

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Hmmm... specifically (Southern) Irish... off the top of my head I can only think of battles they're fighting with each other . They were quite late within Western Europe to legalize gay civil unions, of course, but even that happened in 2010. Note that nowhere that introduced them (or marriage), even when it was the Left that passed the laws against the Right's opposition and the Right later returned to Government, any but the fringest parts of the Right have shown the slightest interest in turning back the tide.
But just look at the German school system and the battles we're still fighting routinely. Or of course the Spanish Conservatives' attitudes towards the regional nationalisms. Etc.

Ah, ok, I get you now. In Irish context a better example would be attempts to create a land/property tax and stricter zoning restrictions, up until the crisis they had been rather successful (still are on certain issues)

Of course what is unusual about the US right is the extent they have tried to turn back the tide on certain issues (known absurdly "social issues" in the US), which is surely related to the way these debates developed in the 60s and 70s. I think if you compared the US right and the European right in the 60s you would not think there was a huge difference (the Left would be another matter though..)

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Every election cycle the democrats haul out this completely irrelevant piece of news. What is really suspect is how many of these countries are governed by right of centre parties, leading one to conclude that if mitt Romney was the leader of their own country's right wing party he would be faring much better in these "polls". Even here in Alberta Obama gets 46% of the vote to romney's 19% and we have had conservatives in power here since 1971 & by large margins too (even our official opposition here is conservative). Doesn't make any sense.

This really only goes back to the George W. Bush years. George H. Bush probably would have won a worldwide vote in 1988, and almost certainly would have in 1992.

no.

No, no way... Maybe Gerald Ford in 1976 though at the latest, but then Ford was running against the sort of evangelical christian (actually a man who was much more of an evangelical then any of the Presidents who have since followed him) who has almost zero cultural resonance in most parts of Europe - never mind the rest of the world. He who "lusted in his heart".

[Tetro Kornbluth]

He who "lusted in his heart".

A remark that was widely mocked over here, of course.

Yeah, that's why I mentioned it. The thing to note though is that it isn't really the sentiment that would be (well, it would be but not so much...) as the sort of ridiculous confessional tone he expressed it in. That aspect of American evangelical Christianity just goes down like a lead balloon among the vast majority of people on the side of the Atlantic.