posted on May 6, 2007 04:56:07 PM new
This might be a very nice change....time will tell.
But at least he wants France to be 'friends' with the US.
So much for the doom and gloom clubs - the world hates America.
I also note that CNN just can't bring itself to mention 'muslim' or home grown terrorist in their Nation.
But ANYTIME a socialist loses, anywhere in the world....it makes for a MUCH better world, imo.
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Sarkozy: I have mandate for change
Story Highlights
? Conservative Nicolas Sarkozy wins France's presidential election.
? Sarkozy won around 53 percent of the vote, according to early results.
? In a victory speech, he promises to be "president of all the French people."
? Conceding defeat, socialist Segolene Royal vows to "keep on fighting."
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PARIS, France (CNN)
-- Conservative Nicolas Sarkozy greeted news of his election Sunday to a five-year term as France's president with a vow to serve as a leader for all people of France.
"The president of the republic must love and respect all the French," he told cheering supporters at his campaign headquarters. "I will be the president of all the French people.
Sarkozy won with 53 percent of the vote in Sunday's presidential runoff, according to preliminary results issued by the French Interior Ministry. Socialist Segolene Royal took 47 percent of the vote.
"The French people have called for change. I will carry out that change, because that's the mandate I have received from the French people."
Sarkozy added that he wanted to tell his "American friends that they can rely on our friendship ... France will always be next to them when they need us."
But, he added, "Friends can think differently."
He then called on the United States "not to impede" in the fight against global warming. "On the contrary, they must lead this fight because humanity's fate is at stake here." (Watch Sarkozy's victory speech )
U.S. President George W. Bush called Sarkozy to congratulate him on his victory, a White House spokesman said in a written statement.
Sarkozy said he would also work to form a link between Europe and Africa.
"We have to overcome hatred to give way to the great dreams of peace and civilization," he said. "It's time to build a great Mediterranean union."
Sarkozy said he would put in place an immigration policy "that is going to be controlled" and a development policy "that is going to be ambitious."
But he said that France would "stand next to" those who are persecuted by tyrants, dictatorships."
"We are going to write together a new page of our history. This page, my dear fellow citizens, I am sure it will be great."
Socialist Segolene Royal, a 53-year-old mother of four, acknowledged her defeat -- with 47 percent of the vote -- in a speech to supporters moments after the polls closed at 8 p.m. (2 p.m. ET).
"Keep the faith, keep intact your enthusiasm," she said at her party's headquarters. "I will keep on fighting the fight that we have started today." (Watch Royal's speech )
Sarkozy, a former interior minister, and Royal were in a run-off after emerging as the top candidates from the first round of voting on April 22.
Sarkozy will replace Jacques Chirac, a conservative who has been France's president since 1995. His election makes him the first French president born after World War II.
Voting was brisk.
According to official figures, more than 75 percent of registered voters had been to the polls by 5 p.m. (11 a.m. ET).
Sarkozy voted in the affluent Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine where he lives, while Royal cast her vote in the western Poitou Charentes region, where she is regional president.
The campaign has been dominated by a debate over how to improve economic growth and reduce unemployment among the young, but its most explosive moments focused on immigration.
Appealing to right-wing voters, Sarkozy said France could not provide "a home for all the world's miseries."
On Friday, Royal said a Sarkozy presidency could trigger violence and brutalities in suburbs with high immigrant populations, prompting Sarkozy to condemn her "threatening comments."
CNN correspondent Hala Gorani reported extra security in some areas around Paris where police have previously clashed with youths of North African origin. There are no official figures on the number of North African immigrants and their French-born descendants in France.
Unofficially, the number is estimated at between 3 and 6 million.
Prior to the election results being made public, Sen. Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican, said a Sarkozy victory would be favorable to the United States.
"Clearly, his views are more in line with ours," Lugar told CNN's "Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer."
Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, concurred: "I do. I do," he told CNN.
"I mean, it would be nice to have someone who is head of France who doesn't almost have a knee-jerk reaction against the United States.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"While the democratic party complains about everything THIS President does to protect our Nation": "What would a Democrat president have done at that point?"
"Apparently, the answer is: Sit back and wait for the next terrorist attack."
Ann Coulter
[ edited by Linda_K on May 6, 2007 04:58 PM ]
posted on May 6, 2007 05:16:06 PM new
Hey old windbag, you can't defend your loser of a conservative fool and longer so now you worry about France? Very Funny
posted on May 7, 2007 11:25:55 AM new
Yes, there is now MORE HOPE.
=================
L'Adulte Can Sarkozy reform France?
Monday, May 7, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
WSJ editorial
Conservative Nikolas Sarkozy's comfortable victory over Socialist Ségolène Royal in France's presidential race may indicate that Europe's slowest-growing major economy is finally ready for some change.
Long derided as a "center of social rest" for its cradle-to-grave welfare state, mandatory 35-hour work week, public-sector strikes and ossified employment rules, France has voted for a new president who claims he wants to shake things up.
"France does not fear change," Mr. Sarkozy told his supporters as the vote progressed yesterday, "France hopes for it."
That's unclear.
It's certainly true that Mr. Sarkozy styled himself as a reformer who wants to arrest the pessimism gripping a country where polls show 70% of voters think their country is in decline. He advocated tax cuts, allowing overtime, and shrinking the central government's bloated bureaucracy by filling only half of the slots opened up by retirement. "The best social model is one that gives work to everyone," he would tell audiences in calling for more dynamism in the economy. "That is no longer ours."
But at the same time the former interior and finance minister has shown a willingness to bail out failing French companies and to embrace greater protectionism. Mr. Sarkozy is certainly no heir to Margaret Thatcher or even Tony Blair, but he is someone that free-market advocates can at least do business with.
So too can Americans.
Mr.Sarkozy was willing to take a lot of heat back home from his visit to America last September on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. While in the U.S., he made it clear that although France's foreign policy will often be opposed to America's, he puts great importance on improving relations.
"He's very admiring of the dynamism of the American people, and of their capacity to give an opportunity to everyone," says Michel Barnier, a former foreign minister who is advising Mr. Sarkozy.
By French standards Mr. Sarkozy is positively effusive about the need for the two countries to emphasize their points of agreement. "My dedication to our relationship with America if well known and has earned me substantial criticism in France," he said. "But let me tell you something, I'm not a coward. I embrace that friendship. I'm proud of the friendship . . . and I proclaim it proudly."
He then went on to say that France's foreign policy had often suffered from an arrogant and insensitive approach, a clear reference to the haughty attitudes of retiring president Jacques Chirac and his prime minister, Dominique de Villepin.
But the clearest break that Mr. Sarkozy represents from leaders like Mr. Chirac is in his background. The son of a Hungarian immigrant, he has always been viewed as an outsider by French elites. He failed to attend the prestigious National School of Administration, where almost every leading figure in French politics, including purported populist Ségolène Royal, went.
It is difficult for Americans to appreciate just how removed from the French people the nation's bureaucratic elite is. Its arrogance is mind-boggling.
One of Mr. Chirac's ministers privately compared the public's repudiation of the EU Constitution in 2005 to a temper tantrum. Listen to former president Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the prime architect of the now-rejected 448-article European Constitution, when he was asked to respond to complaints that voters would have trouble understanding the dense document:
"The text is easily read and quite well phrased, which I can say all the more easily since I wrote it myself."
Even Jean Michel Fourgous, a parliamentary member of Mr. Chirac's own Union for a Popular Movement, bemoans his party's refusal to adopt more-transparent and -consultative government.
He told Time magazine that the country has "been hijacked by an intellectually brilliant elite that's dangerously ignorant about the economy." He notes that while the current government is made up largely of people who call themselves conservative, 80% of ministers have never worked at all in the private sector. The few who have "are tolerated, but shoved into subaltern posts."
Mr. Sarkozy acknowledges he is now part of the elites of French society, but he pledges he will govern in a way that is beyond their interests. "If I'm elected," he told reporters before yesterday's balloting, "it won't be the press, the polls, the elites who chose me. It will have been the people."
His clearest break with much of French elite opinion came last week when he made a dramatic speech about a "moral crisis" the nation entered in 1968, when the "moral and intellectual relativism" embodied by the 1968 student revolt that helped topple President Charles de Gaulle from power the next year.
Today, many philosophers and media commentators routinely pay homage to "the élan of 1968" and lament that the revolutionary spirit of the time did not succeed in transforming bourgeois French society more than it did.
Mr. Sarkozy took on that '60s nostalgia. He labelled Ms. Royal and her supporters the descendants of the nihilists of 1968, and even appealed to France's "silent majority" to repudiate the false lessons of that period. He claimed that too many Royal backers continue to hesitate in reacting against riots by "thugs, troublemakers and fraudsters."
He declared this Sunday's election would settle the "question of whether the heritage of May '68 should be perpetuated or if it should be liquidated once and for all."
It appears that Mr. Sarkozy may have found the ultimate "wedge" issue in France, judging by the solid margin he won many traditional working-class neighborhoods that normally support Socialist candidates.
Mr. Sarkozy's triumph provides at least a chance that there will be a real debate on the role of the state in France's economy and, yes, even some discussion of whether France should be in perpetual conflict with America.
With the victory last year of Angela Merkel, the pro-U.S. leader of Germany, and the impending changeover in power in Britain from pro-American Tony Blair to equally pro-American Labor leader Gordon Brown, there is also at least a chance that Europe will begin to address its problems straight on and avoid needless scapegoating of the U.S.
With Mr. Sarkozy's victory, France's government looks like it will finally have some energetic adult supervision.
"While the democratic party complains about everything THIS President does to protect our Nation": "What would a Democrat president have done at that point?"
"Apparently, the answer is: Sit back and wait for the next terrorist attack."
posted on May 7, 2007 12:15:11 PM new
Oh now, CC, we've agreed more than once.
But I firmly believe liberals have severe memory issues.
But like with the NEWLY elected Frenchman, it's always nice to find areas where the two sides can agree.
I'm hopeful this election where the French wouldn't elect that socialist WOMAN....might be a sign that America will reject the same thing when our election rolls around....our OWN socialist - hillary.
posted on May 7, 2007 01:55:30 PM new
I am glad to see the leader of France believes in the flight against global warming. Look who he belives should also help in the fight
He then called on the United States "not to impede" in the fight against global warming. "On the contrary, they must lead this fight because humanity's fate is at stake here."
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
---------------------------------- The duty of a patriot in this time and place is to ask questions, to demand answers, to understand where our nation is headed and why. If the answers you get do not suit you, or if they frighten you, or if they anger you, it is your duty as a patriot to dissent. Freedom does not begin with blind acceptance and with a flag. Freedom begins when you say 'No.'
posted on May 7, 2007 02:20:10 PM new
And look who doesn't comprehend that this administration is working on just that. Just NOT through Kyoto.
GET informed. I've even posted the info. here before....trying to educate you, ld. But nothing EVER sinks in.
==========
And the EU kyoto agreement is ONE of the reasons several nations in the EU are strugging, economically...with DOUBLE DIGIT unemployment and WE and canada AREN'T.
posted on May 7, 2007 04:52:32 PM newAnd look who doesn't comprehend that this administration is working on just that.
Six years later and the Bush administration is just now admitting to global warming. I don't call that making progress and working on that.
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
---------------------------------- The duty of a patriot in this time and place is to ask questions, to demand answers, to understand where our nation is headed and why. If the answers you get do not suit you, or if they frighten you, or if they anger you, it is your duty as a patriot to dissent. Freedom does not begin with blind acceptance and with a flag. Freedom begins when you say 'No.'
posted on May 7, 2007 05:18:54 PM newREAD....educate yourself ....just once.
I have. I have given you proof that Germany is meeting their Kyoto goals while having a decent economy. If it can be done there, why can't it be done in the United States?
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
---------------------------------- The duty of a patriot in this time and place is to ask questions, to demand answers, to understand where our nation is headed and why. If the answers you get do not suit you, or if they frighten you, or if they anger you, it is your duty as a patriot to dissent. Freedom does not begin with blind acceptance and with a flag. Freedom begins when you say 'No.'
