PARIS (AFP) - Right-wing Nicolas Sarkozy has told CNN that he will be a faithful "French poodle" for President George Bush.
Sarkozy and French Socialist Party candidate Segolene Royal won the first round in the French presidential election on April 22, and now proceed to a second vote in two weeks.
"My heart is neoconservative and American, and I will be a loyal French poodle to America and Israel just like Tony Blair is," boasted Sarkozy. "No more will France be independent of the USA. I am just the opposite of Charles de Gaulle."
Yet neoconservatives around the world have been tossed out of government, or have being marginalized. Sarkozy would turn France into a client state of the neocons just as Berlusconi carried out the neocon agenda in Italy and Jose Aznar did in Spain.
The Bush administration neocons are embroiled in major scandals as the lame-duck Bush presidency faces its final two years, and the US financial crisis deepens. Neocons are in trouble in Germany, Canada, and Mexico, and in Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East the neocon agenda is in deep trouble.
"The French revolutionary slogan of Liberté, égalité, fraternité (Liberty, equality, and brotherhood), the motto of the French Republic, can be upheld with a decisive win for Segolene Royal," admitted Sarkozy.
"My policies of xenophobia, white superiority, my police state mentality, and my anti-labor agenda, are anathema to French ideals," he added. "In fact, my platform is more emblematic of the tripartite motto of Marshal Petain's Vichy government: Travail, famille, patrie (Work, family, homeland) or, more aptly, the sign at the entrance to Auschwitz: "Arbeit Macht Frei."
Voters are now flocking to Segolene Royal ahead of the final election according to opinion polls.
Royal stated after the first round election that she "would never kneel to Bush," unlike Sarkozy.
