Actually, I think it was a minority of the leadership, and definitely a minority of party members, who didn't want a social state upon election victory in 1994. (For my view of the wings of the party, see this 2008 comment.) Problem was, they had no clue about the economy, were naive, and those in charge of the money at the time (to some extent the first finance minister László Békesi, but above all his successor Lajos Bokros, and of course foreign influences like the IMF) knew how to scare them. Even so they had some influence. On one hand, the austerity programme called the Bokros Package was not a classic IMF austerity programme: in addition to spending cuts and VAT raise that pushed millions into poverty, it included a one-off currency devaluation and import taxes, and the mass privatisation was at least not a fire-sale and was used for a significant debt reduction. On the other hand, there was a correction: the Bokros Package wasn't finished and he was made to resign (Horn opposed his plan to privatise healthcare). This was enough to regain a majority of voters by late 1997. Then came Horn's attacks against the liberals and his attempt to re-start the construction of the dam on the Danube at Nagymaros (stopping which was one of the key themes of the 1989 democratic movement). But, even that wasn't enough to lose the elections (though the record low turnout spoke volumes): the government parties and the Socialists actually won the first round; then came the televised debate between Horn and Orbán (Hungary's version of Kennedy-Nixon) and Fidesz's sweep in the second round.

In the light of this, the second aspect is the right-wing appropriation of leftist themes.

There was some of that in 1998, but I think it is necessary to connect Fidesz's appropiation of leftist themes since c. 2004 to more recent events.

First, the Socialist part of the Medgyessy government wanted a socialist government, and delivered in the form of several raised and restored benefits and a public sector wage raise. This economic policy failed, however, for multiple reasons: it was a purely consumption-driving measure, without a serious industrial policy; it was paralleled with an explosion of private debt (sowing the seeds of the foreign currency denominated credit crisis; though the Orbán government's housing credit reforms had their part too); and paired with tax cuts to please the increasingly neoliberal liberal coalition partner (retrospectively, Medgyessy identified the tax cuts as the main reason for his failure).

At this time, Fidesz's propaganda wasn't leftist, far from it. I remember they criticised 'spending excess', but focused on Medgyessy's counterintelligence past (you'll remember D-209). However, there was also Fidesz's need to explain its 2002 election loss. While among supporters, they allowed free rein to the movement claiming an election fraud (do you remember this?), for themselves, they identified the economically inactive benefits-receiving voter: see Orbán in the Wikileaks. (They might have been influenced by Zsolt Bayer in this, who introduced the idea in hate speeches during the campaign; Fidesz leader László Kövér, although falsely credited with the authorship of the expression panelproli = plattenbau apartment block prolearian, picked up railing against the Socialist-supporting "proletarians" later in 2002.) From the identification of a group of voters as the reason for their loss follows the need to win them over. Fidesz could then switch to social populism when Gyurcsány came in, and with him, the least inspired neoliberal discourse. (As far as I followed right-wing media, the stealing rhetoric from the Western European and Latin American Left was pioneered by István Lovas, BTW.) Fast forward to the spending promise escapades of the 2006 campaign, the hospital privatisation referendum, etc.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}