“I am convinced that unless America changes course, we will become the France of the 
21st century–still a great nation, but no longer the leader of the world, no longer the superpower. And to me, that is unthinkable.”
–Mitt Romney, in a speech Thursday in which he said he will suspend his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is receiving foreign policy briefings (Huffington Post) from former UN Ambassador Nancy Soderberg, fueling speculation that he may be preparing to run for the Republican nomination.
Bernadette Chirac, wife of former French President Jacques Chirac, announced her support (Reuters) for Sen. Hillary Clinton’s candidacy yesterday.
Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) criticized President Bush’s policy toward Pakistan. “By giving President Musharraf a blank check, President Bush is alienating the very people in Pakistan who are most likely to share our values, and undercutting his own support for democracy abroad,” Obama said Wednesday.
Republican candidate Mitt Romney defended the troop surge in Iraq Wednesday and criticized Obama’s anti-war stance, saying Iraq would have “safe havens for al Qaeda” (DesMoines Register) if the Illinois Democrat was president.
A mere six months ago, the Boston Globe reported that the campaign of Mitt Romney, strategizing on how best to stick it to the Democrats should their man win the GOP nomination, came up with this idea for a bumper sticker: “Hillary = France.” Even four years after the summer of Freedom Fries, such was the disregard for France in Republican circles that the idea got serious consideration.
Oh how his tune, and that of GOP supporters generally, has changed. Last week, Romney went out of his way to profess “I love France” and repeating his previous assertion that its new conservative president, Nicolas Sarkozy, as a “potential blood brother (BosGlobe).” This week, M. Sarkozy unexpectedly arrived on holiday in New Hampshire, a state of some interest to all these Republican candidates. So it seems a good time to review the GOP field’s Sarko meter. For the sudden love affair between the GOP and the land of cheese-eating surrender monkeys does not stop with Romney.
The normally sober Manhattan Institute blog, “CitiesOnAHill” waxed poetic about the similarities between Sarkozy and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Notes Fred Seigel: “Both are hard-edged, inner-directed men who are willing to be unpopular to advance what they see as essential reforms.” John McCain, en route to Iraq in early July, stopped in Paris to kiss Sarko’s ring (Breitbart). In a recent talk before a business group, Newt Gingrich sang a Sarkozy torch song, touting the French leader’s book, Testimony: France in the 21st Century, and posting a video snippet of his paean on the Gingrich YouTube site.
The intellectual underpinning for this outbreak of Republican Francophilia may be a piece by Dennis Boyles in the National Review back in May in which he analyzes the similarities between candidate Sarkozy’s plight (trapped in the party of an unpopular incumbent, running against a dynamic, photogenic woman) and whomever the GOP nominates in 2008. Boyles urges the future nominee to emulate Sarko in sticking with common sense, espousing ideas and sticking with them, keeping ahead of the media, and “prohibiting cynicism.”
Nonetheless, he concludes: “most French voters think [then French President Jacques] Chirac is a hopelessly inept and cynical loser — sort of the way most Americans, including many conservatives, feel about George W. Bush. The smart Republican candidate will make Bush his Chirac.”
Not all conservative Republicans agree, however. Many expressed disgust (WSJ) at Sarkozy’s insistence on striking the EU’s commitment to “undistorted competition” from an important economic policy paper. More recently, his approval of the sale of nuclear power technology to Libya – along with sophisticated French weaponry – caused at least some reassessments. As the influential conservative blog “Little Green Footballs” put it: “Wow. Just … wow. Nicolas Sarkozy is indeed very different from Jacques Chirac — he’s even worse.”
Copyright 2008 by the Council on Foreign Relations. All Rights Reserved.
