Word: royalities
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...Royal's own party has been keen to remind her that it isn't yet her race to lead. Socialist Party members won't choose their standard-bearer until November. Although Royal's momentum is growing, she is bound to face some nasty challenges from within the party before then. Royal is by far the most popular of the left's possible candidates and perhaps the only one who can beat Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, the likely presidential candidate of the conservative Union for a Popular Movement. Royal has avoided squabbling with party rivals--an indication, her campaign advisers...
Balmy lines like that one are evidence of what sets Royal apart from other French pols. Royal readily acknowledges that her positions would have less appeal if they weren't being laid out by a woman. "It's a symbol of change," she says. "Where men have failed, people think, O.K., maybe we'll try a woman." Stéphane Rozès, one of France's most respected pollsters, says, "She is popular because she's a woman who has a nondoctrinaire stance toward politics. People see her as out to solve problems, while so many others, most of them...
...Royal is also willing to capitalize on her pulchritude. "Her strategy, which she exercises with no scruples, is one of seduction, and that's a new thing in French politics," says Régine Lemoine-Darthois, co-author of a recent book about women of Royal's generation titled An Age Called Desire. "She holds up a mirror to French women that they find very agreeable: to knock men dead while being a woman of power. She's proof that you don't have to abandon your femininity to make it." At a campaign meeting in Paris earlier this year...
...opponents, such tactics mask an ideological emptiness that will show up sooner or later. "Technique doesn't replace politics. There have to be ideas, convictions, a discussion of the stakes," says former Prime Minister and two-time presidential candidate Lionel Jospin, whose disdain for Royal's approach led him to challenge her for the party nomination. (He withdrew from the race last week, removing a major hurdle for Royal.) An adviser to Strauss-Kahn issues a similar criticism: "What the polls measure is popularity, not competence. Socialists have a furious love of debate, and she's not debating. What does...
...Royal believes that by downplaying ideology, she can attract voters from across France's political spectrum, including former party loyalists who stayed home or drifted to the fringes in the past election. "To win in 2007, the left has to get votes everywhere, even from the [far-right] National Front," she told TIME. "There are 30% of leftist voters who vote for the National Front because they're exasperated--they're in unstable jobs or insecure neighborhoods. Rather than worrying about the center, the left had better work on this working-class constituency, which is casting protest votes for extreme...