No,

What Americans call liberals is what we call “hippies” (pot smoking lads in California for example). If we are talking about liberals in Europe, we don’t mean conservatives because that’s another thing. I think a European liberal party would be very similar to the Democrats, while our conservatives are more Republican. There are no social democratic or green parties in the US, but there are some MP’s who could be seen as a “green” or a “socialist” fraction in the Congress or Senate.

Problem is the difference between continental and Anglo-Saxon politics. In Europe, a political party represents an ideology. In America, you have two political parties, each of them consisting of different opinions. A republican in the US can be pro-Abortian, while his colleague, who’s also republican, can be against it. In Europe, MP’s just say what their party wants them to say. While it would be normal for a republican to question Bush on his foreign policy, in Belgium, a MP of a coalition-party should actually just shut his mouth and do whatever the gov’t is asking him. Not very democratic.