Word: righting
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...role is to talk to people who are stuck in traffic. And conservatives become incensed enough listening to public radio that it keeps them awake so they don't drive into a fire hydrant. That's what we do: we save the lives of thousands of right-wingers every year. And they never thank...
...nation's Nazi occupiers. Such contempt isn't usually directed at someone in a rather anonymous cabinet role. But Eric Besson, the Minister for Immigration, Integration and National Identity, is different: he's currently overseeing a national debate on French identity that detractors on both the left and the right say stigmatizes minorities and immigrants. And yet, despite the fierce criticism and controversy, he's the cabinet member President Nicolas Sarkozy is relying on most to secure conservative gains in regional elections in March...
...detest. A former Socialist party official, Besson is considered the consummate traitor by the left after defecting from the 2007 presidential campaign of Ségolène Royal over strategy differences and throwing his support behind Sarkozy, the conservative candidate. Since then, he's embraced his new right-wing faith with the zealousness of a convert, making many long-time conservatives uncomfortable. Chief among his more hard-line moves has been the decision to hold an ongoing series of town hall meetings across France to define the French national identity. Some say the forums are already being used...
...Mixing national identity with immigration is an error," says conservative legislator and former Interior Minister François Baroin, who is one of several politicians on the right calling for the debates to be ended. "It's opening Pandora's box." Former conservative premiers Alain Juppé and Jean-Pierre Raffarin have similarly questioned the "utility" and "intellectual rigor" of the debates. And Sarkozy's own commissioner for ethnic diversity, Yazid Sebag, admitted to being "not very comfortable" with the initiative...
...stealing a page from Le Pen's playbook as the best way for Sarkozy to woo FN voters to his camp ahead of the March elections, just as he did in 2007 when his presidential campaign took up anti-immigration and law-and-order platforms to win over far-right voters. Plus, Besson has argued, if you steal FN voters, you will eventually kill the party. (See pictures of the French cracking down on migrants...