"My values are yours, those of the republican right," the young, energetic candidate said accepting his party's presidential nomination.
He vowed to slash personal tax rates, cut corporate taxes, abolish most estate taxes and pursue pro-growth policies that reward hard work and entrepreneurial risk-taking. The free-market republicanism he envisioned, he said, "creates jobs, builds houses, lets workers earn a living, gives poor children a chance."
On foreign policy, he was a blunt-speaking realist. "The idea of an Iran with nuclear weapons is unacceptable," he said. He stunned a group of Arab ambassadors, The New York Times reported, by telling them "his foreign policy priority as president would be to forge a closer relationship with Israel."
The people must never forget, he said elsewhere, that they are "heirs of 2,000 years of Christianity."
Even though the outgoing president was a man of the candidate's own party, he ran against that president's big-government conservatism, declaring that his own election would mean a "break with the ideas, the habits and the behavior of the past."
The son of an immigrant, he said he welcomed legal immigration, opposed illegal immigration and would reinvigorate efforts to assimilate immigrants already in the country.
"I passionately love the country I was born in," he said. "I don't accept people living in France without respecting and loving France. I don't accept people moving to France without bothering to speak and write French. ... If you live in France, then you respect the values and laws of the republic."
Last Sunday, conservative Nicolas Sarkozy was elected president of France. Now, many American conservatives may wish they could find a candidate like him to run for president of this country.
This desire can only be fueled by the fact that Sarkozy defeated a Socialist Party nominee, Segolene Royal, who in many ways resembled Hillary Clinton. The resemblance was so obvious the Clinton campaign felt compelled to deny it -- after Royal was defeated.
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