Defeated Socialists search for scapegoats

[Logan13]

France has a Conservative President........woohoo!
Defeated French Socialists search for scapegoats
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/bf138202-fbf...b5df10621.html
05/06/07

Let the finger-pointing begin. Ségolène Royal’s defeat on Sunday night left the French Socialist party in disarray and searching for someone to blame. There is hardly a shortage of scapegoats.

It is the party’s third consecutive presidential defeat. The Socialists now face the question of whether they can ever regain power without ditching their anti-capitalist rhetoric, as the mainstream left has done across almost all of Europe.

Ms Royal can argue that she did better than Lionel Jospin, who in 2002 led the Socialists to a humiliating third place behind Jacques Chirac and far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen. But France’s main opposition party still faces a wrenching crisis.

”The left is not credible on so many issues, from the 35-hour working week to immigration and law and order,” says Dominique Reynié, professor at Sciences Po university.

“It is the fault of the left collectively. Ever since their [parliamentary election] defeat in 1983 they have never questioned their fundamental ideology, only thinking they needed to change tactics,” he says.

In many ways, Ms Royal, the Senegal-born daughter of an army colonel, seemed to be the tactical masterstroke that could restore the Socialist party to winning ways.

Young and moderate voters were drawn by her Blairist ideas and taste for smashing party taboos on the 35-hour week and young offenders. By embracing the internet to invent a new participative style of campaigning, the glamorous 53-year-old seemed to be breaking the political mould, becoming the first woman with a shot at the Elysée palace.

But Ms Royal failed to capitalise on the buzz around her euphoric victory in November’s Socialist primary, when she was seen as the “gazelle” beating more experienced “elephants” for the presidential nomination. The fierce primary battle, however, left the “elephants” feeling jealous and reluctant to rally behind her.

In the months that followed she lost momentum, committing several gaffes, notably on foreign and economic policy, which sowed the seeds of doubt about her “presidential stature”.

Her campaign was shambolic. There were many last-minute agenda changes and she often arrived late. Socialist staff moaned about her personalised leadership style. An opinion poll found that 63 per cent of voters thought her campaign was poor.

She never seemed able to escape from her party’s rigid ideological barriers. Every time she tried, for instance by suggesting military camps for young offenders, it provoked a volley of criticism from the party apparat.

Moderates attracted to her early campaign were disappointed by her manifesto, filled with generous spending pledges and little indication of how to fund them.

Party disunity exploded into public view when Eric Besson, her economic adviser, quit saying she was “dangerous for France” and joined the Sarkozy campaign.

François Bayrou, the centrist who came third in the first round, cited her economic policies as his reason for not endorsing Ms Royal. “Her manifesto, multiplying the interventions of the state, perpetuating the illusion that the state must take care of everything… runs in the opposite direction to the orientation needed,” he said.

The awkward role of François Hollande, her party leader and father of her four children, seemed to backfire. He claimed she would raise taxes – forcing her to deny it – and she suspended a spokesman for saying Mr Hollande was “her only flaw”.

Ms Royal has always kept her distance from her party. She will remain head of the Poitou-Charentes region and many expect her to retreat to her rural base in western France to wait for the party battles to calm as she mulls a 2012 presidential bid.

Commentators predict the party could now be torn in two, along the lines of the split in the 2005 European referendum, when a large minority rebelled against the official party line and campaigned for a No vote.

”Her defeat will be extremely damaging for the left. Huge divisions will start to emerge at 8pm on Sunday,” says Eric Dupin, author of A Droite Toute, a book on the rightward shift of French voters.

Jean-Marie Colombani, director of Le Monde newspaper, says: “Globalisation is still considered a threat and diabolised as the root of all evil. The left must get out of the ideological impasse in which it has been trapped for too long.”

[Hoggage_54]

France has a Conservative President........woohoo!

France has had a Conservative President for a while

[Logan13]

France has had a Conservative President for a while

Are you stating that Chirac was Conservative?

[Hoggage_54]

To my understanding, yes. It was the Prime Minister who was left leaning.

"He ran as a conservative candidate in 1995 and was elected to succeed Francois Mitterrand."

Taken from: http://www.answers.com/topic/jacques-chirac

Here's another thing I found:

In 1997 Chirac, amid rising public discontent, called early legislative elections in a gamble to bolster support for his economic reform program. The gamble backfired. The Socialist Party, joined by other parties on the left, easily defeated the conservative-led government, forcing Chirac into a new period of cohabitation with Jospin as prime minister. Shortly after the elections, Chirac suffered several foreign policy defeats when French proposals to admit Slovenia and Romania into NATO were rejected, and France’s readmission to the full NATO command structure was shelved.

Taken from: http://www.oup.com/uk/orc/bin/978019...acques_chirac/

[Logan13]

To my understanding, yes. It was the Prime Minister who was left leaning.

"He ran as a conservative candidate in 1995 and was elected to succeed Francois Mitterrand."

Taken from: http://www.answers.com/topic/jacques-chirac

Here's another thing I found:

In 1997 Chirac, amid rising public discontent, called early legislative elections in a gamble to bolster support for his economic reform program. The gamble backfired. The Socialist Party, joined by other parties on the left, easily defeated the conservative-led government, forcing Chirac into a new period of cohabitation with Jospin as prime minister. Shortly after the elections, Chirac suffered several foreign policy defeats when French proposals to admit Slovenia and Romania into NATO were rejected, and France’s readmission to the full NATO command structure was shelved.

Taken from: http://www.oup.com/uk/orc/bin/978019...acques_chirac/

Actually, it was the other way around.
"On the domestic front, neo-liberal economic austerity measures introduced by Chirac and his conservative prime minister Alain Juppé........"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Chirac

In 1995, Chirac defeated the Conservative and Socialist candidates to win the Presidency. Regardless, if you define Chirac as politically conservative than you must be a socialist.

[Hoggage_54]

I'm guessing the new President follows the neo-conservative view then.

[Prada]

The last socialist President was Francois Mitterand who was replaced by Chirac around 1995. So its been over 10 years and now even longer with Sarkozy