A “Royal” Defeat … Conservative Nicolas Sarkozy Wins France’s Presidential Election … “the US could count on France’s friendship”

Call it a “Royal” defeat or Strike 3, Socialists in France go down in smoke as Conservative Nicolas Sarkozy wins  Presidential election with an estimated 53% of the vote.

PARIS (Reuters) – Conservative Nicolas Sarkozy won France’s presidential election on Sunday, beating his Socialist rival Segolene Royal by a comfortable margin and extending the right’s 12-year grip on power.

Forecasts by four pollsters showed Sarkozy, 52, a hard-line former interior minister, won around 53 percent of the vote in the second-round ballot and will succeed fellow conservative Jacques Chirac, who was president for 12 years.

In an even more stunning and welcome  turn of events come the following comment from  France’s President elect:

Sarkozy wins French presidency

PARIS, France (CNN) — Conservative Nicolas Sarkozy greeted news of his election Sunday to a five-year term as France’s president with a vow to serve as a leader for all people of France.

“The president of the republic must love and respect all the French,” he told cheering supporters at his campaign headquarters. “I will be the president of all the French people”.

Sarkozy added that he wanted to tell his “American friends that they can rely on our friendship … France will always be next to them when they need us.”