In several countries, Europe's centre-right, still reeling from widespread electoral failure, faces a choice: hook up with the far right in order to grab back power, and thereby lend respectability to its ideas, or reject it outright on a point of principle but at the price of electoral defeat.
Democrats complained about the powergrab, but were cool with Obama using those powers to step things up in Afghanistan, go after bin Laden in Pakistan, use drones everywhere, and bomb Gaddafi in Libya (meanwhile, Republicans started screaming at him for abusing executive power).