Sneak a peek at the hate of '08

Embrace the suck because whoever is the Republican is going to be in '08, especially if they run against Clinton - is going to be demonized like, well, like Sarkozy.

Ségolène Royal intensified a desperate final effort yesterday to tar Nicolas Sarkozy, her presidential opponent, as a dangerous tyrant whose election would threaten the peace of France.

Ms Royal, the left-wing candidate who is about four points behind the conservative Mr Sarkozy in polls, denounced her opponent for the “great violence” and “brutality” of a campaign that she maintained was frightening away voters.

She will use a critical television debate with her opponent tomorrow to contrast her “France at peace with itself” with Mr Sarkozy’s “France of the hard Right”.

...
For the Left, vilifying Mr Sarkozy offers a last hope of breaking his march to the Elysée Palace on Sunday. Ms Royal’s aim is to stir anti-Sarkozy fears ...

With his character increasingly a campaign issue, Mr Sarkozy mused at the weekend over the antipathy that he stirs: “Why so much hate? Maybe it is because I say out loud what everyone thinks to themselves.”

He proceeded to spur fresh fury among the left-wing Establishment by blaming the “generation of 1968” for the moral crisis of France. The Socialist party elders and many top civil servants and academics were students in that year of revolt.

Pro-Royal campaigners have called him a “French Berlusconi”, a new Bonaparte and a “French George W. Bush”.

Marianne, a low-circulation magazine, has sold out 300,000 copies of a cover story on “The True Sarkozy”. This called him insane. “His is the kind of madness that has stoked a fair number of apprentice dictators in the past,” it said.

The 100 artists and intellectuals called for a Royal vote yesterday: “To vote against Nicolas Sarkozy is to avoid the danger of a France at war with itself, in conflict and in crisis, divided and torn apart,” said the group, which included the actress Jeanne Moreau, the film directors François Ozon and Constantin Costa-Gavras and the singer Georges Moustaki.

Many of the signatories are to join Ms Royal, along with pop singers and other celebrities, at a rally tonight at the Charlety Stadium in Paris.

The demonisation of the favourite is one of the most striking phenomena of the 2007 campaign, academics and historians say. Max Gallo, an historian who served as spokesman for the late President Mitterrand, said: “Putting aside Jean-Marie Le Pen, I cannot think if any other case of a politician being execrated like this since the hatred of opponents of de Gaulle.”

If this works in France - stand by. When you don't have anything constructive to do - hate. Mindless hate. No one does it like the Left. Scare. Hate. Violence. I hope Sarkozy wins so we can watch Socialists do this.