Handling Limbaugh and Beck the French Way

To French conservatives, the problems Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck pose to the image of the Republican party are all too familiar. In the 1980s, the French Socialists tried to link conservatives with the politics of the far-right National Front party.

From Paris, it is difficult to make an informed judgment about figures such as Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck, if only because their shows are not broadcast here. But to the French, the problem currently faced by the GOP rings a bell.

In 1981, the Socialist opposition leader François Mitterrand won the presidential election on a platform which involved huge public spending and nationalizations, along with leftist foreign policy postures and a general message of "change" (the slogan was simply "the change"). Unsurprisingly, the economic situation only got worse, with an unprecedented rise in unemployment, several currency devaluations and a reduced growth rate. In any case, that is how it was perceived and the conservative opposition felt pretty sure of winning the scheduled 1986 legislative election. They did, but their victory was limited and Mitterrand easily won the next presidential election in 1988. How did he do that?

Simple.

First, he changed the electoral system before 1986, turning it from a two-round constituency based election to a proportional one. That made it possible for smaller parties to get a higher number of seats in the National Assembly. The main beneficiary was Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front, a party that had remained marginal until 1981, and had since that date benefited from both the Socialists' pro-immigration policy and their failure to curb unemployment.

Once represented in the parliament - for the first time in its history, the National Front could benefit from the French system of public funding.  This in turn helped them establish and keep a few local fiefdoms in France, even after the majority vote electoral system was reestablished right after the 1986 election by the conservatives - who had nevertheless managed to secure a short majority.

While I don't think the National Front has much to do ideologically with people like Limbaugh or Beck, the party's founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who is still active, is a natural-born orator, an extremely charismatic figure and an unrepentant provocateur. On a regular basis, Le Pen managed to outrage the media and most of the public with more or less ambiguously antisemitic comments and politics obsessively centered on immigration, to the point that he seemed to enjoy being considered racist. That, of course, was all to the advantage of the left.

At the same time, Mitterrand started to promote directly SOS-Racisme, a so-called NGO whose ostensible mission was to act against racism in France. In reality, SOS-Racisme was founded by socialist militants who would then be allowed by Mitterrand to create a new branch, for themselves, inside the Socialist party. But at least until the 1988 presidential election, SOS-Racisme could pose as a non-partisan organization with a purely humanitarian vocation.

During the two years of "cohabitation" (i.e., when the president and the government plus the legislative majority are from opposite sides, leaving the president essentially powerless), the Socialists branded the conservatives as extremists and racists. Nothing in their policies justified such accusations, but the socialists accused them of secretly considering an alliance with the National Front. SOS-Racisme, which had become very popular among youths and benefited from public subsidies (remember, they were supposed to be nonpartisan), overtly took sides with Mitterrand. This and the fact that it was politically difficult for the Prime Minister Chirac to campaign against his President greatly facilitated Mitterrand's victory in 1988.

Throughout the 90's, the National Front remained a huge embarrassment for the conservatives, who were trapped between losing elections because of bad second round coverage if they kept too distant from the far right, or losing them because they frightened the centrists if they didn't. Eventually, the socialists fell into their own trap in 2002, when Le Pen beat Socialist candidate Jospin during the presidential election's first round, and finally in 2007 when Sarkozy managed to attract many National Front supporters while keeping enough of the centrist vote to win.

But in the meantime, Mitterrand successfully managed to use what had been a fringe party organized by a charismatic more or less fascist-like leader to corner conservatives, who found themselves in a position that may not be entirely different from that of the GOP today, vis-à-vis popular and charismatic figures like Limbaugh (putting aside of course the obvious differences between their worldview and Le Pen's).

So what lessons have been - painfully - learned by the French conservatives?

First, they had to make an unambiguous choice between an alliance with the National Front and the rejection of such a strategy. They chose the second option (Mitterrand however chose an alliance with the communists, but that is another story). Maybe the first option was viable too, but what caused them problems was the occasional ambiguous behavior of the rank and file who were open to opportunistic alliances with the National Front in local elections. Chirac, as the conservative leader during this period, managed to remain firm in opposing these alliances on the national level. The reward came in 2002.

Second, it took them longer but they finally managed to use campaign themes that had in effect been monopolized by the National Front on issues of domestic security and immigration. These are in fact important but toxic issues, but the conservatives were forced to reformulate their own policies.

That however did not require any major transformation on the part of French conservatives. They are still what they used to be, that is, nothing exceptional. There is no conservative renaissance. They just learned to cope with the National Front outflanking them in elections, though it took them about fifteen years.

Is there any lesson for the GOP? Honestly, I don't know, but if so, they could be formulated this way: First, if Rush says something right, don't let him be the only one saying it; Second, embrace him or not (preferably not), but do it clearly and don't change course.

This is not very original but it cannot do any harm.