NIDRA POLLER: JEAN FRANCOIS COPE WINNER TNE NEW PRESIDENT ELECT OF UNION FOR A POPULAR MAJORITY IN FRANCE
http://www.d-intl.com/articles/international/2012-11-22/let-them-eat-their-pain-au-chocolat
Let them eat their pain au chocolat……
Breaking news: Jean François Copé is officially declared the winner of the hotly contested November 18th election of the president of the UMP (Union for a Popular Majority) by a slim margin of 50.03 percent against François Fillon’s 49.97 percent
PARIS. The media are having a feast over the cliffhanger that was supposed to be a landslide for former Prime Minister François Fillon. It took the party’s electoral committee twenty-four hours to recalculate the figures and settle claims of irregularities and/or fraud in half a dozen polling places, ultimately validating the razor thin victory of Jean-François Copé. Both candidates had proclaimed victory on the night of the election: Copé with a forthright speech at 11:30PM and Fillon, shortly afterward, with a brief legalistic affirmation of confidence that the election committee would confirm his narrow lead of some 200 votes. By then, BFM TV had been giving non-stop coverage of the election for six hours of uninterrupted suspense. It went on all the next day and late into the evening, and began again early this morning with post-match discussions and commentary. Copé’s victory is not only good for the UMP, it is a benediction for the debate on the Islamization of France, Europe and the West, because he raised the issues, stuck to his guns, did not fold under pressure, and came through with a hard won victory that will give the party a much needed thrust of positive energy.
Since Nicolas Sarkozy announced his retirement from political life after his narrow defeat against François Hollande last May, pollsters and commentators were predicting a crushing victory of Fillon over Copé to fill the vacancy as president of the UMP. As the polls opened on Sunday November 18th, Fillon’s inevitable triumph was estimated at 70% to his rival’s 30%. This was the first time that the party chief was elected—by card-carrying members of the UMP—instead of appointed by an inner circle of party leaders. It had also been predicted that the months-long battle between Fillon and Copé would turn nasty and tear the party apart. But that didn’t happen. Now, undaunted by their previous failures, the same predictors are ecstatically speculating on the myriad ways in which the UMP will finally implode, explode, and go down the tubes. I think they are dead wrong. Representatives of each candidate fought bravely to make the figures fit their hopes, the election committee ironed out the differences and officially declared the winner. Despite Fillon’s refusal to accept the verdict with grace—he growled at the umpire and pompously deplored a moral fracture in the party – the UMP will close ranks and organize its opposition to the Hollande government. The immediate goal will be municipal elections in 2014.
François Fillon dutifully served as prime minister during the five years of Nicolas Sarkozy’s one-term presidency. This is highly unusual in France, where presidents traditionally stay above the fray, leaving the prime minister to do the heavy lifting and eventually get dumped to placate disgruntled citizens. Sarkozy initiated a new governing style, which earned him the mocking title of “hyper-president.” Despite his efforts to be a “normal” president, François Hollande is being forced by circumstances to follow Sarkozy’s model.
Jean-François Copé, who played an active role in Sarkozy’s campaign for re-election last spring, was inspired by the president’s courageous combat in the face of a predicted Hollande landslide. By carrying forward the platform of that campaign, Copé opened himself to ferocious criticism from the media and political opponents on the left and, more subtly, from certain currents within the UMP that labeled him “divisive.” Fillon, on the contrary, was appreciated within and outside his own camp as a unifier. Copé—dismissed as divisive, abrasive, unpopular, and worse—was constantly accused of “droitisation” [la droite = the right]. What exactly is the “droitisation” of a right-wing party? Is it the intensification of an over the top right-wingedness? Or something else? Something that functions like the “Islamophobe” label to stifle criticism of Islam, or accusations of “Judaization” to deny Jewish sovereignty in Jerusalem.
In Copé’s own words, this alleged “droitisation” is a call for a right that is “décomplexée” –uninhibited or unashamed—that will oppose a vigorous résistance to the harmful policies of the current majority, with no concessions to political correctness; a “républicain” right, meaning that it respects the laws and traditions of the République; a party that reaches out to the population, on the ground, in its daily life, and is unafraid to state problems as they are and undaunted in attempts to find solutions. His program, detailed in a recently published Manifeste pour une droite décomplexée, was reduced by the media and his opponents to a pain au chocolat. Why? Because Copé dared to cite parents in some neighborhoods, exasperated to learn that a bully tore the pain au chocolat out of their kid’s his hands, shouting that he doesn’t have the right to eat during Ramadan.
Without bothering to question the veracity of the story, commentators followed the example of the bully, pounced on Copé, tore the pain au chocolat out of his hand, and smashed it in his face. Every time he was interviewed, he’d get a barrage of pain au chocolat. As if he had uttered an obscenity. The pain au chocolat –a delicious flaky buttery chocolate filled pastry — is the ultimate treat a French schoolchild can hope for his afternoon snack. It smacks of French identity! And that’s why the simple mention of it was treated as a provocation.
Copé’s décomplexé comeback was: if telling the truth about what is happening in certain neighborhoods is “droitisation” then knowing the truth but hiding it is “gauchisation [gauche = left].”
In addition to his role as General Secretary of the UMP, Copé is deputy mayor of Meaux, a town famous for its mustard and brie, that has been drawn into the orbit of Paris and subject to all the ills of the banlieue. It is here that he was faced with the facts on the ground, all sorts of human distress, conflict, violence and at the same time, he says, the opportunity to find political solutions to social problems. He contrasts this experience with the abstract ideologies of Parisian-based politicians (Fillon is a deputy for the 7th arrondissement of Paris).
At his last rally before the vote, Fillon argued that he would be a better leader because he can appeal to citizens across the board, from right to center to left, while his rival was pulling the party too far to the right. What is this droitisation all about? Is it connected to policies, positions, or programs related to the economy, energy, the European Union or the eurozone? Does it have anything to do with labor relations, garbage collection, housing construction or taxation? Is it connected to any political function, action, or theory other than the problems with Islam? No. And this is why Copé’s remarks about the disturbing development of anti-white racism in France is, like the pain au chocolat, considered to be a “provocation.” Waving a red flag… in whose face? Again, the question is not is it true but is it droitisation to say so.
A well-informed, highly motivated, determined counter-jihad activist would no doubt find Copé’s manifesto weak and full of illusions. His book is overwhelmingly devoted to social harmony, his method is conciliatory, his action has always been directed at the “vivre ensemble” [getting along together] his language is not inflammatory, he doesn’t stigmatize anyone. What is his crime? And why did more than 50% of UMP members ignore the pundits and put their trust in him?
Jean-François Copé is “guilty” of the crime of lèse dhimmitude. He unashamedly defends the notion of national identity, confronts issues of “communitarisme” [tribalism, clannishness and, more frankly, anti-social behavior of a significant minority of the Muslim population], crime, anti-Semitism, homegrown terrorism, abuse of social services and, more generally, the exasperation of French people whose hard won freedoms are assaulted and whose social organization is gradually being overwhelmed by retrograde forces.
And to top it off, he is opposed to pet projects of the Hollande government—same-sex marriage and voting rights for non-EU foreigners. Does that make him a disgraceful neo-fascist, no different from the Front National? Copé’s second-generation patriotism is in stark contrast to the attitude of a troubling minority (or is it a majority) of the current, essentially Arab-Muslim immigration. His Rumanian-Jewish grandfather came to France in 1926 to escape anti-Semitism and bolshevism; he changed his name from Marcu Copelovici to Marcel Copé. His Algerian-Jewish mother fled her native land to escape anti-Semitic nationalism. Copé’s paternal grandparents and their children were hidden from the Nazis and their Vichy collaborators by righteous gentiles. Copé was raised in a spirit of patriotic gratitude to their adopted land and his precocious political career—mayor of Meaux at the age of 31 and youngest deputy–was a logical extension of that gratitude.
Copé is warm and personable, with a sharp but luminous intelligence and a sincere smile. Forceful but calm, a man of integrity, unafraid of taking the hard knocks of politics but never embittered or cynical. He loves to be on the ground, in touch with party activists and simple citizens, persuading voters with good arguments, getting results. He likes competition, wants to win.
Contrary to what is being said by the muddle-headed, Jean-François Copé will take the steam out of the Front National. Always and unfairly suspected of wanting to form alliances with the FN, the UMP has no interest in dallying with a party that has no capacity to govern, draws its shaky strength from the very exasperation that the UMP, under Copé’s leadership, is prepared to squarely address. Why, he says, would I countenance any alliances with the FN when Marine Le Pen deliberately orchestrated the victory of François Hollande by convincing half of her supporters to vote blank in May? And why, he pursues, should I take moral scolding from the left that is allied with the far left, implicitly approving their abhorrent policies.Was the hairline defeat of François Fillon and the 24-hour delay in reporting official results of this election– organized and carried out, it should be reminded, by volunteers joyfully overwhelmed by an unexpectedly big turnout– a disaster and a disgrace for the UMP? Not at all. It was a handsome exercise in democracy, a fine demonstration of the superiority of politics over murderous tribal competitions for a tyrannical chief, and a slap in the face of complacent chatterboxes who wanted Fillon precisely because he would have been weak.
And what could be more comical than to hear them blustering about the shamefully bungled UMP presidential election while obviously ignoring the glaring irregularities in the reelection of their hero, Barack Hussein Obama.
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