Usually of course, the Republicans like to smear Democrats like John Kerry in 2004 as somehow not being real Americans-they claimed that Kerry "looked French." The French have been a long time whipping boy of the GOP-who can forget Freedom Fries?
In this cycle it turns out it's actually Romney who is more French, or anyway, actually speaks fluent French. So if Mitt Romney speaks French perhaps it's appropriate that French Nicholas President Sarkozy speaks Mitt Romney.
After his poor showing on Sunday's first round where he lost to Socialist candidate Francois Hollande and Far Right wing candidate Marine Le Pen of the National Front party scored the highest NF showing ever in the first round with 18% of the vote.
Sarkozy's answer is to double down on extreme Right wing rhetoric to woo the Le Pen voters. He is out attacking immigrants and promising to lower quotas. Hollande, however, actually is trying to win Ms. Le Pen's supporters too. Of course he's not doing it by attacking immigrants but by arguing that he can speak to their economic concerns and unhappiness with the euro system.
For her part, Ms. Le Pen is not advocating anyone and will likely tell her supporters to vote for neither. What is disconcerting for Sarkozy is that his lead over Hollande among Le Pen supporters is only 47 to 26.
So we see that Sarkozy speaks fluent Mitt Romney just as Romney speaks fluent French. After all, Romney is about as extreme on immigration as can be imagined-he argued for "self-deportation" without a touch of irony. This phrase-self-deportation-was actually a joke about the policies of Californian Governor Pete Wilson during the 90s. They served him well-the Republican party is now basically nonexistent in the state.
As for Sarkozy, if this is the best he can do-vote for me I'll deport the strange foreigners-he doesn't deserve another term. Even besides the fact that I really like this guy Hollande-he is shaping up to be the ultimate anti-austerity candidate. Europe may finally be waking up.
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