Remember when the legacy media spent months hooting and jeering at the very suggestion that Donald Trump could be president? Then November 8, 2016 happened — and made Rachel Maddow cry. I don’t know if France has a butch lesbian anchor (Melissa Theuriau is rather fetching, and straight), but it’s starting to look like there will be a lot of tears from the French media this April.
Across the Channel, journalists at The Times are already wringing their hankies. The golden boy of the Euro left, Emmanuel Macron is suddenly in dire straits. From being as arrogantly assured of victory as Hillary Clinton in 2016 (Macron didn’t even bother to officially nominate until the last minute and was the only candidate not to deign to appear in the main televised debate), Macron suddenly has La Deplorable, Marine Le Pen, snapping at his heels.
Now polls show Le Pen only three points behind Macron in the first round on April 10, with one showing her trailing the president by 48.5 per cent to 51.5 per cent in the second round two weeks later. True, Macron remains the clear favourite. But the momentum is with Le Pen.
The Euro elite is horrified at the prospect of une mauvaise femme orange in one of the EU’s keystone states.
There’s no question that this would be a political earthquake in Europe, akin to the Brexit vote and Trump victory in 2016. A victory for an anti-immigrant, anti-globalisation populist, this time in one of the eurozone’s core member states, would raise questions about the future of European integration.
The Australian
To paraphrase Dirty Harry Callahan, well, I’m just all broken up about the future of European integration. For Le Pen, the future of the EU runs a long second to asserting the supremacy of French sovereignty over EU rules.
And while the rest of the EU are working themselves up into a lather over a squabble in a former Soviet province, the French are more concerned about issues closer to home.
The French have moved on from the war in Ukraine, disturbed as they are from the pictures coming out from Mariupol and Bucha. Their overriding concern has switched to the economic consequences of the conflict and a recent survey disclosed that 43 per cent are ‘very worried’ in this regard.
They want to know what measures candidates will implement to prevent the cost of living crisis spiralling out of control. Le Pen has addressed these concerns, so too has Jean-Luc Melenchon, the veteran left-winger, whose stock has been continually rising in recent weeks. Those French who like a flutter are even wondering if they should put a few euros on a Le Pen vs Mélenchon second round.
An absurd idea? Perhaps. But don’t underestimate the enmity millions of Frenchmen and women have for Macron. They really hate him, this ‘president of the rich’, as they christened him back in 2017.
In fact, the social consequences of the EU elites’ open borders policies are sharpening the minds of a great many ordinary French. While the media-political elite may rail against Le Pen’s anti-immigrant policies, the French people are listening when Le Pen advocates a “preference nationale”, which would see French nationals prioritised ahead of foreign residents for jobs and benefits.
Other consequences of EU open borders policies, especially the Islamisation of France, are also looming large in the election.
The family of Samuel Paty, the schoolteacher brutally murdered by an Islamist in October 2020, announced that they are suing the ministries of education and interior for ‘non-assistance of a person in danger’. Also taking legal action against the state is the family of Yvan Colonna, the Corsican independence terrorist, murdered in a prison gym last month by an Islamist. They attribute his death ‘to a series of administrative dysfunctions’.
Yet perhaps the most damaging moment for Macron of this election campaign may turn out to be a remark he made last week. During a walkabout in the west of France he was asked what he thought of a local man, a farmer, who had shot dead one of a gang of four burglars who had broken into his property. The farmer has been charged with murder although he claimed self-defence, saying he was protecting his three-year-old daughter. Macron sided with the dead man, declaring he ‘was against self-defence’, adding: ‘We are a constitutional state. There are rules, otherwise we will become the Wild West’.
It was an instinctive response from Macron, and a disastrous one, revealing just how disconnected he is from the average voter. As Le Pen and Eric Zemmour regularly point out, France is already the Wild West. Violent crime is a constant problem and people are in despair at the lawlessness around them.
Spectator Australia
As Mark Steyn blasted a quorum of smirking leftists at Canada’s 2016 Munk Debate, the globalist elite has prioritised the “rights” of Muslim immigrants over the rights of Western women and children. “Frankly, shame on you,” Steyn thundered.
French voters are asking themselves, who is going to prioritise the rights of native French in France? Increasingly, it seems, the answer is not Emmanuel Macron.
