Dartblog

By midi I imagine we will be close to knowing whom the French people have elected to lead their fair republic. Of course it will be Mr. Sarkozy: We can tell that just by observing Ms. Royal’s last minute tactics, which have included a warning that, should her opponent succeed, massive violent riots will break out all over France; and that she should be elected because she would be France’s first woman president, and to do anything but vote for her would be a setback for women’s equality. (It is a wonder that she did not have Ted Kennedy imported, so that he could order the hordes of Paris and Lyon not to “turn back the clock on women’s rights” by voting for Mr. Sarkozy.)

In summation, those who 1) Do not like violent riots and having their Citroen torched, and 2) Do not hold all women to be witches, should vote for Segolene Royal. Alas, she’ll be disappointed. A France under Nicholas Sarkozy stands to take in less tax revenue than under Jacques Chirac, because the new man proposes the government to have a less substantial role to play in the wellbeing of France’s economic and social domes. At the blog of The New Criterion, Roger Kimball comes up with a new tax that just might keep France’s central government as grand and fat as it ever was: a tax on convenient political euphemism.