I thought Sarkozy was suppose to be a right-winger. But, according to John Nichols in The Nation:
Try to imagine Bush 2 or Bush 1 or Reagan or even Nixon talking like that! Are European RWs RWs at all by American standards?!
No, they’re Democrats.
What I was going to say. What America calls liberal, they call right wing. What we call right wing they call lunatic fringe.
Funny how that lunatic “fringe” tends to consist, philosophically, to approximately half the country’s population (and growing, if recent polls are to be believed).
Funny? More like scary and depressing (if actually true).
Funny? It’s only funny when they talk about how brilliant Sarah Palin is, but for the most part it’s just depressing and sometimes scary, too.
ETA: Beaten.
What polls? This study and this one say the opposite. And “approximately half”? I think you’ll find it’s approximately a third (and dropping).
Getting back to the OP: I wonder if Obama will feel obliged to react to this in any way? (Since he’s taken some heat over how much of his bailout money has gone for executive bonuses.)
Not quite that many, fortunately. But your criticism of my characterization of those people would have more bite if I actually liked America and felt some obligation to talk about how great a place it is. Instead, it’s just an example of why I don’t.
It’s to center its orientation, but with that hot a wife you gotta wonder why he has anything left.
Heh. Pretty hypocritical words, from a guy who, a mere few months ago, was basing his entire political platform on the slogan “let’s work more to earn more !!”, and was busy abolishing every social program from the last 20 years. Measures of well being, my pale arse.
Oh, and Der Trihs, I don’t think you could call Sarkozy an American-style liberal. He’s for more police/more “toughness on crime”, more immigration control, against nationalized businesses, against welfare/unemployment benefits, against minimum wage, against reducing work hours, against “Islamisation” (whatever the fuck *that *means)… From where I stand, he’s a right winger all right, and pretty far right at that.
That is, when it’s what gets him elected. He doesn’t have convictions, but a desperate, almost pathological urge to have his name in history books, to stand out. Whatever he thinks will help there, he’ll say. Including the above.
Sarcozy is not right wing. Le Pen is right wing, which is why he only won 18% of the vote in 2002.
In the US, someone like Le Pen would easily win a national election. His stance on the issues is not too radical by US standards:
Reinstatement of the death penalty
Anti-immigration stance
Anti-abortion
Resisting international organizations (the EU, UN, etc)
Xenophobia against muslims
Support of torture
The French have too much dignity to elect someone like that though. Good on them. In the US someone like Le Pen would be president of the senate, speaker, president or something else.
I wouldn’t call the majority of Democrats liberals either.
Excellent point 
Well when you consider the Conservative party leadership in the UK supports a Universal Healthcare model that would make most Democrats recoil in horror…
Your ever-so-slightly-left-of-centre-with-a-teeny-little-social-conscience Democratic Party isn’t nearly left-wing enough for us.
“Dignity”?! From people who eat snails, build public toilets without seats, and invented the blowjob?!
I take back anything bad I have ever said about the French.
If they truly invented the BJ I’d say humanity owes them a considerable debt.
You’re mistaking American anti-governmental sentiment for a universal (or even coherent) definition of “right wing.”
The Right in France has always been Statist, and highly un-liberal. Indeed much of the Right tradition in the non-Anglo Saxon world is very Statist and un-liberal. The Americans are rather the outlier in the unique identification of Right as Anti State as such.
Sarkozy is really just returning to the traditional French centre Right tradition of Statist desire to control economic activity.
You forgot the body odor.
And yes.