M. Sarkozy n'est pas un européen convaincu, comme nous tous, qui défend les intérêts de la France. Il est avant tout un pro-américaniste, il est un zélateur de Bush...quelqu'un qui se fixe comme programme d'être le futur caniche du président des Etats-Unis.

[Mr. Sarkozy is not a confirmed European, like the rest of us, who defends the interests of France. He is foremost a pro-americanist, a Bush zealot...somebody who sets an agenda to be the future poodle of the president of the United States.]

Laurent Fabius,
député PS de Seine-Maritime (4ème),
long-shot presidential nominee hopeful (3%),
"big idea" blogger
September 16, 2006 (Le Monde)

FUTURE POODLE
Bad Doggie

CRITICS ROUND ON SARKOZY OVER PRO-US STANCE

PARIS September 20, 2006 (Guardian) - Nicolas Sarkozy, France's centre-right presidential front-runner, has sparked outrage by declaring himself a "friend of America", posing for a grinning handshake with President Bush, and extolling the US way of life on a recent visit to New York and Washington.

We, of course, are biased, but just what in the above is there that warrants outrage? Disagreement, argument, yes, but outrage?

Ah, and here is Mlle. Royal, who seems determined to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt she is a dim-wit.

Yesterday the socialist presidential front-runner Ségolène Royal waded into the row, telling a French TV station: "My diplomatic policy would not consist of going and kneeling in front of George Bush. ... When Nicolas Sarkozy lines up with George Bush, does that mean that he sanctions preventative wars, that he accepts this theory of a war of good against evil, that he tolerates all these efforts to destabilise the world? We can't accept that and moreover France cannot accept it."

[Emphasis added.]

Mlle. Royal's theory of war is belligerents are morally neutral. Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mohammed Omar, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Saddam Hussein, no bad guys here. Though Mr. Bush is understood to be a bad guy. And that Mlle. Royal thinks American efforts are directed toward destabilizing the world, well, say no more, Mlle. Royal has convinced us she is a twit.

The Socialists seem to agree on three things: 1) America -- not Mr. Bush alone, America itself -- is a malignant force in the world; 2) M. Sarkozy is a malignant force in France; and 3) Mlle. Royal's political assets are best displayed in a bikini.

PFFT (What is this?): Socialists finally join hands 3 | Socialists kneel before anti-Americanism 3¾ | Rayonnement français 0