Word: centrist
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Runoff. Though nothing would be certain until next week's second-round runoff, there was a good chance that the Gaullists would hang on to a slim majority, but it was also possible that they would be forced to seek a coalition with the small centrist parties- or even lose control of the Assembly al together to the first leftist coalition since the Popular Front of the 1930s. What ever the results, the Gaullists have al most certainly lost the license, which they had exercised for the past 15 years, to speak for all of France...
...France, as elsewhere, polls are intriguing but uncertain barometers. Most observers attributed the rise in support for the rightist and centrist parties to the concerted political scare strategy of the Gaullists. Blithely ignoring a constitutional provision that France's President is above partisan politics, Georges Pompidou, in a television interview, spearheaded a Gaullist campaign designed to convince French voters that a leftist victory would mean chaos at best, a Communist takeover at worst. To which Gaullist Premier Pierre Messmer added a prediction that it would bring about "a demolition of the Fifth Republic...
...cause a change in traditional voting patterns. French voters, who ballot twice on consecutive Sundays in the elections for the National Assembly,* have generally shifted on the second ballot to give bigger votes to the first-round leaders. Some voters who go Socialist may shift to candidates of such centrist parties as the Radicals or Center Democrats. But Center Democratic Leader Jean Lecanuet wooed the undecided strongly last week in a rally at Rennes by promising that if no clear majority emerged from the election, his party would help keep the Gaullists in power...
...Speechwriter William Safire leaves the President's house to become a Times columnist. Safire, 43, was a successful public relations man before joining the Government four years ago. "People know I'm a Nixon man," he says. "I always have been. I guess that makes me a centrist, or just to the right of center." In a relatively humorless Administration, Safire stands out as a wit and phrasemaker. He wrote The New Language of Politics, a droll political lexicon, and is credited with coining the Agnewism "nattering nabobs of negativism...
...Figaro, a centrist French daily not noted for its pro-Americanism, took a more conciliatory tone: "As for throwing the entire responsibility for the failure of the talks solely on the American Government, it is good polemics at most...