Word: centrists
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...overriding goal, stability, for the country and himself. In a speech last month in Minsk, he told workers, "I am decisively in favor of political and economic stabilization, for strengthening order, so that authority is authority and not jelly." He now favors a "stable political coalition of centrist forces" that will include more than the Communist Party but exclude radical democratic groups. He apparently envisions parliament and national politics as Communist- dominated but co-opting enough dissent to keep the comrades on their toes. "It is necessary to turn the Communist Party into the integrating factor of all centrist forces...
...their first-round share added with the Socialists' is only 36.2%. And if much of Jean Marie Le Pen's 10.4% transfer their support to the tough-on-immigration Sarkozy, the outcome of the presidential race will be decided by the 18.5% of voters who backed split-the-difference centrist Francois Bayrou. Bayrou only recently began distancing himself from Sarkozy and the ruling conservatives after having been a close ally (and twice member of government) of French conservatives for much of the past two decades...
...Early election returns showed Union for a Popular Majority (UMP) candidate Sarkozy winning around 30% of the vote, versus nearly 26% for Royal - largely in line with what recent polls had projected. But the strong, 18.5% showing by Francois Bayrou of the Union for French Democracy party casts the centrist in the role of possible kingmaker going into the second round. The weight of the Bayrou vote was further enhanced by the electoral whipping of extreme-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, who in France's last presidential race in 2002 shocked the nation by making it into the final...
...This time, the Socialists are less concerned with the six far-left candidates, none of whom is polling as strongly as in 2002, than they are by the challenge of Francois Bayrou, the insurgent centrist whose spike in the polls since January comes largely from center-left voters disappointed with Royal's often vague, confused and gaffe-prone campaign. Pollsters had expected that Bayrou's pre-spring bloom would have withered by now - after all, his centrist Union for a Democratic France (UDF) has only 5% of the seats in the National Assembly. Instead, he has found real traction with...
...Presidential campaign gets off to a fast, early start, the notion of tweaking the mental health laws rather than pushing gun control legislation in vain has its obvious appeal, particularly among centrist Democrats who are hesitant to alienate the gun lobby in key battleground states. In the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre none other than former President Bill Clinton, who in the past has blamed some national Democratic party losses on the gun control debate, has added his voice to a chorus of others this week calling for a different approach. When Larry King asked Clinton Thursday about...