Posted on 04/27/2007 1:47:31 AM PDT by Cincinna
Ségolène Royal, the Socialist candidate in the French presidential election on May 6, accused Nicolas Sarkozy, her conservative opponent, on Wednesday of having “apologized” to President Bush for France’s decision not to back the United States militarily in Iraq.
Mr. Sarkozy’s campaign team called her words “lies.”
“I am not for a Europe that aligns with the U.S.,” Ms. Royal said on France 2 television. “I have never been, and will never, go apologize to President Bush for the position of France on the issue of refusing to send our troops to Iraq.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Royal is desperate. She has been shown a loser in the last fifty opinion polls. Her attempt to back-room deal with Bayrou to woo his supporters has backfired.
She has played the "hate America" card. I predict it will backfire.
Sarko may be France's last chance before sinking into an abyss.
Of course, there are no real French Conservatives, are there?
With only 10 days to go, this is starting to get really ugly. My guess it will get much worse has Royal gets more and more desperate.
FReepmail me if you would like to be on the FRENCH ELECTION PING LIST.
Here's hoping that the very unRoyal loses... big time.
I bet al Qaeda is planning to lend her their assistance...
My thoughts exactly.
I agree. Royal is desperate. French voters can see it also.
This thing is going to be down and dirty to the end since Royal is behind.
Her campaign has to totally trash Sarkozy at every turn to win.
So first Royal forms an “unlikely coalition” of leftists, liberals, greens, and socialists....
Then when she looses they immediately FREAK OUT, and blame voting machines, and how they were ‘screwed’ and the election stolen...
And then goes off on a totally unrelated tangent to attack Bush when he other ‘ideas’ don’t garner enough political support or favorable media.
Finally right on queue... the old grey whore, the NYT eagerly gobbles up the ‘juicy’ details...
Fan-tas-tic!
Sarko needs to go on offense. State that this is the kind of desperate thing you might expect from Kim Jong Il or Hugo Chavez, but the French people know better and France is not so impotent that it needs to define itself as anti-America.
Gore, whatshisface in Mexico, Royal... all using the same playbook.
To quote Rush: “A liberal... is a liberal... is a liberal.”
“Of course, there are no real French Conservatives, are there?”
It depends on how you define “Conservative”. There are French royalists, still! And by a traditional measure of the word “conservative”, that’s pretty conservative!
If by “conservative” you mean people who believe in the American “Ayn Rand” model of unregulated trade (export manufacturing to China, because it’s best for stockholders; import poisonous food from China, because it’s cheap) and unregulated capitalism no, there is nobody in France who believes in that, and there never will be. Sarkozy is about as “conservative” in that sense as French people come, but he opposes American Ayn Rand style “free” trade completely, and although he wants to make French labor law more supple, he has never even hinted at privatizing national health insurance or privatizing national pension insurance, because even he thinks that such ideas are economically unsound and crazy. Nobody in France thinks like Americans do, economically. So, if economic organization is the measure of “conservatism”, then there are no French conservatives, there never have been any French conservatives, and there never will be any French conservatives.
Sarkozy, the former interior minister whose tough stances on law and order and immigration have brought him enemies in immigrant suburbs and beyond, is facing an “Anything but Sarkozy” movement that Royal and her allies are using to fan fears that he would “brutalize” and “divide” France.
“Why so much hatred?” he asked over and over in a campaign speech Monday, repeating the question 46 times.
With the left promoting an image of Sarkozy as a power-hungry, 21st-century Napoleon...
Heightening the drama, there have been calls on the French left for the Socialists to cast aside their historic ties to the Communists...
Asked on RTL radio if he was accusing Sarkozy of asking Canal+ television to cancel the debate, Bayrou said: “I don’t have the proof but I am certain of it.”
Bayrou said he based his accusations on testimony from people inside Canal+ and “all those who were interested in the debate and intended to broadcast it.”
“I say with certainty that we have before our eyes today the proof of this propensity or choice of Nicolas Sarkozy to control the news and debate, and this is harmful for France,” he said.
“It’s slander, a slanderous insinuation,” said Sarkozy’s normally restrained campaign director Gueant.
“It is extremely serious to make such remarks. These are Stalinist tactics. To assert things without proof is extremely serious,” he told Reuters.
The CSA broadcasting watchdog issued a statement denying it had ordered Canal+ and two other broadcasters to drop the debate, sparking cries of foul play from the Socialist camp.
“There is Sarkozy censorship in this affair, I’m deeply convinced of it. We know that Sarkozy always operates like that, through intimidation,” senior Socialist Jean-Marc Ayrault said on LCI television.
Bush to Sarkozy, “Welcome to my world.”
Royal will certainly pull out all the stops, and it will appeal to her base. It remains to be seen whether the majority of French will find it appealing to their national pride, or will see it for what it is.
The Muslim terrorists will certainly be doing some calculations here, too. Would a terrorist attack throw the elections to the defeatists, as it did in Spain, or would it finally wake the French up to their terrible danger? Hard to say.
Also, al Qaeda will be planning, but thousands of French “youts” will do whatever comes into their pointy little heads, so there may well be riots regardless of what the terrorist leadership chooses to do.
I’m still not sure if France can win even if Sarkozy is elected, but seemingly it will be their last chance, short of an outbreak of revolutionary violence and civil war.
This is a perfect example of French “foreign policy”, i.e. just do the opposite of whatever “les Americains” do, regardless of principle or issue. This French election campaign is all about who hates America more. They’re tripping over each other to “prove” it to the electorate. Pathetic opportunists.......so much for the French being sophisticated......
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