Les sachetiers de thé

By Carl 

A grand hero of our far right wing, Nicholas Sarkozy may have unwittingly created an irreparable fracture in the conservative party in France: 

PARIS—Former prime minister Francois Fillon, outraged at losing a chaotic internal leadership vote marred by irregularities, announced Tuesday that he and his followers are splitting off from France’s main conservative party and forming their own parliamentary group.

Fillon said the breakaway faction could return to the mother party, the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), if a new leadership election were held within three months. But his victorious rival, Jean-Francois Cope, has already rejected that proposal, suggesting that France’s right-wing conservatives are likely to remain in disarray for some time with two hostile political figures each claiming to be in charge. 

Sarkozy's success in winning the oresidency of France papered over a much deeper rift between the two factions, who kept silent in order to maintain party unity behind Sarkozy.

Well, now it's "Partie unité, mon coule!" 

And yes, the split involved immigrants and Islam, at least partly. Fillon, to his credit, repudiated scare tactics like this in the heat of the campaign to re-re-elect Sarkozy.

And that's when things fell apart for French conservatives.

I raise this article because of the interesting dynamic we are starting to see in America. Support for Grover Norquist, the unlikely tax cut Svengali of an entire national party, has been eroding quickly in the face of the wholesale repudiation of the electorate of the politics of anger, fear, and greed.

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