French vote: Relief, or a delusional moment?
Marcus Walker, Fox Business: “The first-round results of France’s presidential election on Sunday offered encouragement for the European Union but warnings for the established center-right and center-left parties that have dominated Europe’s politics for decades. (Results) put the EU’s favored candidate, Emmanuel Macron, into the final round on May 7. There he will face the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen.”
Robert Zaretsky, Foreign Policy: “Macron, facing a political landscape potted with craters where the country’s two establishment parties once stood, has cast himself as the ultimate centrist. ... A friend of the financial and industrial worlds, Macron also portrays himself as the defender of France’s revolutionary and universal values of liberty and equality. ... Macron’s great challenge will not be gaining the Elysée, but instead fashioning a functional extreme center, one that doesn’t end, as it did in repeatedly in the 19th century, with sharp lurches to either the extreme right or left.”
Dean Obeidallah, CNN: “Le Pen, like President Trump, ran a campaign that was anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and traded on white supremacist themes. ... Le Pen is more than a little smitten with Trump. She has publicly praised Trump and met with some of his top surrogates. ... And while she supports Trump, there is little doubt she also holds Russian President Vladimir Putin — and Russian banks — in the highest regard. ... Le Pen has also advocated views that help Russia at Europe’s expense. She has vowed to pull France out of NATO, the military alliance created to be a check to Russia’s military might. Le Pen also called for an end to the sanctions imposed by the EU on Russia for its annexation of Crimea, dubbing the sanctions ‘unfair and silly.’ ... And now it appears that Russian intelligence agencies are trying to influence the French election the same way they are alleged to have done in the U.S. election.”
Anne Applebaum, The Washington Post: “Whatever the final result, Le Pen and her party will not go away. They stand for a set of feelings that are real, that exist in every Western country. ... Though the origins of the National Front are indeed fascist — its founders included Vichy sympathizers — it is no good dismissing her candidacy on those grounds.”
Natalie Nougayrède, The Guardian: “France did save its honor on Sunday. In the era of Brexit and Trump, this vote was a major pushback against forces that threaten the fundamental democratic values the West is meant to uphold. ... The agonizing question now is whether a low turnout on 7 May, fueled by a ‘neither Macron nor Le Pen’ reflex among parts of the electorate, might yet produce a nightmare scenario. That would make Sunday’s collective sigh of relief look like a delusional moment. ... Conflating Macron and Le Pen as two equally unacceptable propositions, because Macron is a former banker supposedly beholden to evil capitalism, is ridiculous. The center needs to hold, when the alternative is the far right.”