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>> French conservative Les Républicains leader Laurent Wauquiez is set to name hardliner François-Xavier Bellamy to lead his party’s list for May European elections. The nod has been criticised within the party for pushing LR yet further to the right. Unknown to the general public, the 33-year-old Bellamy is an unabashed conservative and a rising star in French conservative circles. A deputy mayor of Versailles since 2008, the young philosophy professor has authored two remarked-upon book-length essays. He notably also took part in the inception of Sens Commun, a political movement that grew out of the Manif Pour Tous anti-gay-marriage rallies and which has sometimes been likened to US hardline conservatives’ Tea Party movement. <<

Couple of thoughts:

1) I wonder if this guy is an ACTUAL conservative. We all know what "conservative by French standards" usually means. Remember when Nicholas Sarkozy was advertised by the media as a "hard-right French conservative who loves America" and various FReepers had orgasms over his presidency and fawned over him and family. Then Sarkozy hailed Obama as the messiah and his BFF, only parted ways with Obama when Obama wasn't liberal ENOUGH on global warming for his tastes, pushed hard for gaystapo agenda, gun control, abortion on demand, and couldn't contain his contempt for Netenyahu. If that's a "right-wing conservative", I'd hate to see what left-wing looks like over there.

2) If he IS an actual mainstream conservative (as Fieldmarshaldj notes, the media will label him as an ultra-right racist bigoted fascist in that case), I wonder if the media and various FReepers will claim a traditional conservative Catholic winning in a majority Catholic country is somehow a victory for "the Evangelicals" and that the staunch Catholic is "the Evangelical candidate" as they've claimed in the case of Brazil. Cuz, you know, Barack Obama winning over TONS of Jewish voters somehow makes him "the Jewish candidate" and his win a "victory for Judaism", right? Same "logic".