France won't have Francois Hollande, with his mixed message name, failed 75% tax and bizarre affairs, to kick around anymore. The French loved Hollande almost as much as ketchup and so he has decided not to attempt to win an unnwinable race that would only drag his fellow Socialists down with him. The little leftist clown has left the building.
French President Francois Hollande said he won’t run for re-election, stunning the nation and opening the way for his more popular prime minister to enter the 2017 presidential race.
Hollande made the announcement in a televised address on Thursday evening, saying that his lack of support opened the country to the risk of extremist movements. He becomes the first president since the Fifth Republic began in 1958 not to seek re-election.
While Hollande didn’t say who should represent the Socialist Party in next year’s election, the move potentially clears the path for Prime Minister Manuel Valls, who has said he’d run if the president decided against a bid.
While Valls is a far better candidate than Hollande, the fundamental problems remain. Even without touching on the economics (regardless of names, every likely French candidate, even from the right, is a Socialist by our standards) the core problem of Islam is at the heart of France's malaise from violence to terrorism to poverty zones to lack of integration. Valls has been good when it comes to rhetoric, but so was Sarkozy. Rhetoric and reality are not the same thing. France requires serious measures to save the Republic. And that means major changes to immigration and deportation policies.