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I'm not sure Sarkozy ever had the bonafides of a true outsider - he only had the media appearence. Bayrou had it, Royal almost had it too. Neither were actually outsiders. Duping the vox populi is done with the media (which he has in his pockets) ; the establishement never saw Sarkozy as an outsider (can the mayor of Neuilly be an outsider, anyway ?).

Don't forget that a large share of the French establishement haven't got many problems with the far right ; Pasqua was mayor of Neuilly before Sarkozy.


Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.

by linca (antonin POINT lucas AROBASE gmail.com) on Tue Jul 31st, 2007 at 10:13:36 AM EST
[ Parent ]
He might not really have this bona fides properly, but he is seen to have it by a large segment of the voting public, I'm thinking older and especially among the same type of indépendants/forains/artisans et c. who'd been drawn to Le Pen and who would have, had it been a different candidate than Sarko for the UMP, stuck with him this time around.

I know anecdotally that in my family circle just about everyone was taken in. Even longtime left voters, for example, the father of the one who did my procuration, whose father had been long-time socialist mayor of a small town between Marseille and Toulon, voted something other than PS for the first time in his life - detests the FN, profession liberale (medicin) and all that.  Ditto my wife's family, in fact, I remember having a convo with her mother just before the 2nd round where she's asking me what's wrong with Sarko, so I go down the list, and finally I get to who he would name as PM, and that seemed to have worked but I imagine she turned in the same ballot anyway. Sarko yes, Fillon not so much, as the subsequent legislatives showed.

My point is that, given where he is going fiscally and legislatively, he's going to lose a lot of these people, probably the same who didn't think much of what Borloo was leaking, because his bona fides as an outsider will be shown to have been utter bullshit. Enough people believed it the first time around but not the next time, five years is too long before the bullshit starts to smell.

by redstar on Tue Jul 31st, 2007 at 10:43:45 AM EST
[ Parent ]
by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Tue Jul 31st, 2007 at 10:55:38 AM EST
[ Parent ]

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