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...
I agree. Royal is desperate. French voters can see it also.
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.
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.
It will backfire. I agree Cincinna.
The secular left is scum.
The political fighting is getting goofier as it nears the end.
Royal really is hapless.
She should have walked away with this election.
I knew she was in trouble early, because I subscribed to her “Desirs d’Avenir” website, conversed with her partisans, posted thoughts there too. She herself did online chats there, and she posted her position papers.
Here was this bright, polished woman from ENA, attractive, and a mother of four to boot: she looked like a slam dunk, and should have BEEN a slam dunk.
But then she posted her opinion essays.
They were banal. Absolutely banal. There was no insight there. Platitudes like “Yes, yes I do believe that France has a future...”, followed up by calling those who webloggged for her cause her “militants”. It was like some sort of college student union pep rally. Flaccid, cabbage-headed, cud-chewing rhetoric. Abject.
I stopped reading after the second essay. And stopped saying that she was going to win. She was inept. When she proved as inept at international relations as she was in her Desirs d’Avenir, and the Guignols d’Info picked her up as a dimwitted suit, it was fading to black.
And then came the Gare du Nord and the reassertion of reality. After that, she was doomed.
INTRADE BETTING ON SARKOZY
INTRADE BETTING ON ROYAL
Sarkozy will be just another chiraque, but at least he’s not french.
Opinion polling
Before the second round of vote
Polling Firm Date Source Sarkozy Royal
TNS-Sofres 29 April 2007 [11] 52 48
Ipsos 29 April 2007 [12] 52.5 47.5
Ipsos 28 April 2007 [13] 52.5 47.5
Ifop 27 April 2007 [14] 52.5 47.5
Ipsos 27 April 2007 [15] 53 47
Ipsos 26 April 2007 [16] 53 47
BVA 26 April 2007 [17] 53 47
Ipsos 25 April 2007 [18] 53.5 46.5
TNS-Sofres 24 April 2007 [19] 51 49
Ipsos 24 April 2007 [20] 54 46
LH2 23 April 2007 [21] 54 46
CSA 22 April 2007 [22] 53.5 46.5
BVA 22 April 2007 [23] 52 48
Ifop 22 April 2007 [24] 54 46
Ipsos 22 April 2007 [25] 54 46
[] Exit polls first round