Could the right throw the election away?
Conservative newspaper ABC slams the PP for wasting two weeks on the Vox problem in the regions.
It must be the effects of the first heat wave this summer. Now Guardiola in Extremadura says that she is going to do a deal with Vox. Last week, she insisted that she could never govern with “those who deny chauvinist violence, those who use the broad brush, those who dehumanise immigrants, and those who unfurl a canvas that throws the LGTBI flag into the rubbish bin”. Today, she backtracked and said that "Vox is a constitutional party with which I want to reach an agreement". They have lost the momentum: Onda Cero in Extremadura reports that the socialist, Vara, will now have a go at a confidence debate to become regional first minister on July 12, which will be more favorable media attention for the PSOE in the run up to the election.
ABC rails against Feijóo in its editorial: "fifteen days of the pre-election-campaign lost due to the mismanagement of negotiations with Vox in different regions". The conservative newspaper accuses the PP of a lack of leadership and of losing the frames and the media agenda, when they had done so well with their Bildu terrorist message for the May elections. The new beach campaign was presented with a false beach, TVE wants them to stop calling the campaign "Blue Summer" because there was a 1980s TV series with the same name and the "Que te vote Txapote" [“ETA terrorist Txapote can vote for you”] slogan from the May campaign has just become "Que te vote Chanquete" [“Chanquete can vote for you”], after a character from the Blue Summer series.
And there are still three long weeks to go. The polls are still favorable to the right but the PSOE is not going to let the Vox business drop, and there is still no clarity on which debates will happen. If, as now seems likely, there is going to be a rapprochement between the parties on the right, they are going to prove Sánchez right in terms of the global ideological frameworks: the PP will indeed be preparing to bring the new alt- or far-right party into national government in Spain. For left-wing voters, once the real election campaign gets underway and they watch the debates, that’s a powerful emotional message. A month ago, the right had the momentum; now, not so much, and this week the stupidity continues. Today, Feijóo is being criticised for not knowing how to do basic maths and for saying that Sánchez wants to kill everyone with the heat by calling the elections on July 23, after the first heat death of the summer due to excess temperatures was recorded in Seville.
"Spain has to get to more than 22 million people paying social security by the end of the next parliament”, Feijóo said during a speech earlier, while attempting to explain his economic policy: “this rule of two, well, instead of two it is twenty-two, but it is two, and it is two times ten". In another speech, he said that “Yesterday, the first victim died due to the hot weather. That’s why [Sánchez] called the elections for July. But not at the beginning, no, in the second half of July”. That’s why. Cause and effect. Extrapolating the death of a man who surely would not have wanted to become part of the election campaign in such an improper manner to an evil plan concocted by the Prime Minister to do away with hordes of voters at the end of July doesn’t seem like a winning message.