Posted on 11/24/2016 2:09:50 AM PST by Cronos
An amateur racing driver and unrepentant Margaret Thatcher fan who has broken ranks with the traditionally statist line of the French right, he has promised a “radical shock” for France – tax cuts, public spending cuts, slashing public sector jobs and breaking trade union power.
His popularity is also down to his careful appeal to the deeply socially conservative views of the Catholic right, promising to reverse certain recently won adoption rights for gay couples, preserve traditional family values and respect France’s Christian roots.
...It is, however, Fillon’s social conservatism and “family values” – including his private views on abortion and his drive to limit adoption rights for same-sex couples – that have become a focus of the bitter second round run-off to win the right’s presidential nomination.
....Fillon, who abstained when parliament was voting on a 2014 law on the equality of men and women, has previously said that as a Catholic he is personally opposed to abortion but would not try to change the 1975 law that legalised it in France. Furious that the abortion issue was being dragged into the debate, he said it was “grotesque and ridiculous” that he was being “billed as a medieval reactionary”.
Born in a traditionally Catholic region of western France, Fillon, 62, who with his Welsh wife raised his five children in a 12th-century chateau, has the support of hardline groups that oppose France’s same-sex marriage law. When the Socialist government introduced the legislation three years ago, it led to huge street protests, and the fractures in French society have not healed.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Fillon is the hope of those who want to stop Marine LePen from winning in the presidential election in France next spring.
Make France great again!
Overall he looks like a much better candidate than Le Pen
He is certainly being put forward as a tempting alternative to LePen, is he for the EU or against the EU like Nigel Farage is?, is he a Corporatist-Globalist like Merkel?
Those are the more pressing questions to me.
If he won’t pull out of the European Union which is forcing genocidal Islamic invaders down the throat of europe, then he looks like vomit wrapped in diarrhea.
Which side is he on as far as the European Union, that is the big question raised by Nigel Farage in the UK, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and the Freedom Party candidate for President of Austria Norbert Hofer (December 4th election)???????
Getting conflicting reports about Fillon. One publication says he wants a closer relationship with the eurozone post-Brexit (after voting against the euro and the EU constitution); the same publication has him quoted as saying his fiscal program “remains socialist”.
It appears he is too Catholic to get the current Pope’s support.
Nice... Next Country to be anti globalist. Step right up and play - ‘Who want to be Anti-Globalist?’
Fillon is as you say, socially conservative and economically liberal, where he sees an advantage for the latter. Actually, imo, he is more like Thatcher in the mentioned approach or ideology than Le Pen.
yes. In my opinion he is the better candidate for France
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