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July 2024

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France’s right wins big in first round of parliamentary vote By David Isaac

By on July 2nd, 2024

https://www.jns.org/frances-right-wins-big-in-first-round-of-parliamentary-vote/

France’s far-right topped the country’s first round of legislative elections on Sunday for the first time, with the National Rally, the party of Marine Le Pen, winning about one-third of the vote.

Finishing second was the left-wing coalition, New Popular Front (NFP), with 27.99% of the vote. Third was French President Emmanuel Macron’s ruling Ensemble, or “Together,” coalition with 20.76%.

The vote was a rebuke to Macron, who called the snap General Assembly elections after his party suffered a heavy defeat to National Rally in European Parliament elections on June 6-9.

The vote solidified the fact that National Rally, once considered a fringe party, has moved to the mainstream. Voters, when queried by press, frequently expressed the view that while they once found the party scary, they now no longer do.

A pre-election study by the Ipsos polling institute of a representative sample of 10,000 registered voters found that National Rally voters had “grown and diversified,” The New York Times reported.

While still strongest among the blue-collar working-class, the study found National Rally’s electoral base had “considerably widened,” improving its vote by 15 to 20 percentage points among retirees, women, the under-35 age group, high earners and big-city residents.

It signifies how far National Rally has come from when it was known as National Front and headed by Marine Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was convicted of Holocaust denial. His daughter expelled him from the party in 2015.

She then raised her protégé, Jordan Bardella, 28, charismatic and telegenic, to president of the party.

“Marine Le Pen’s smartest move was to appoint Bardella as number two if not as co-leader,” Michel Gurfinkiel, a French author, journalist and public intellectual, told JNS.

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R.I.P. to a Fateful Metaphor for Biden’s Incompetence: Noah Rothman

By on July 2nd, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/r-i-p-to-a-fateful-metaphor-for-bidens-incompetence/

As Joe Biden’s campaign collapses, so, too, does the misguided Gaza pier.

As Joe Biden’s campaign collapses with all the force of a Red Giant star, there may not be much of a market out there for imploding-campaign metaphors. But for those of you whose demand for analogies along those lines is nigh insatiable, here’s hoping you didn’t miss the final days of the president’s ill-conceived Gaza pier.

Last Friday, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh revealed that Biden’s brainchild — a temporary dock extending from the Gaza coast into the Mediterranean, from which humanitarian assistance could be dispersed to local Palestinians — was defunct. “As we always said with the pier, it is meant to be temporary,” she said. “When the commander decides that it’s the right time to re-install that pier, we’ll keep you updated on that.”

Singh added that the pier was never going to be a “long-term solution or solve for land routes,” which is “the most effective way” into the Strip. But that was the point of the pier as a political argument. It was designed to embarrass the Israelis for failing to distribute humanitarian aid (716,000 tons and counting) to the Strip to the administration’s satisfaction. The Israelis did not publicly object to the slight, in part because it would further imperil Jerusalem’s relationship with the Biden White House and because it would make little sense to object to the administration’s offer to relieve the humanitarian burdens on the IDF. But the lack of a defined and achievable mission ensured that the pier would have to remain in operation indefinitely — at least, until the close of combat operations in the Strip.

The Biden White House surely didn’t intend for the pier to remain in service forever, but nor could they have possibly set out to engineer an embarrassment for themselves.

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French Elections: Stormy Weather By Andrew Stuttaford

By on July 2nd, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/french-elections-stormy-weather/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=third

I have no idea what is going to happen in the next (and final) round of the French parliamentary elections, and I’m not convinced that many do. With all the runoffs ahead, some of which will be three-way runoffs, only so much can be extrapolated from Sunday’s vote.  One key problem for those who wish to opt for a “republican front” of (essentially) all the other parties against Marine Le Pen’s RN is the presence of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s hard-left LFI (France Unbowed) in the second-place NFP (New Popular Front). If blocking the RN was their goal, the parties of the center Left may have blundered badly by going along with LFI in the NFP, an alliance that is likely to make some, particularly on the center right, pause as they consider how to vote.

After all, as Anne-Elizabeth Moutet writes in the Daily Telegraph:

Only three weeks ago, on June 12, Macron could not find hard enough words for the Jean-Luc Mélenchon-led New Popular Front. “The socialists, greens and communists are allying themselves with an anti-democratic, anti-parliamentarian, anti-Semitic, anti-nuclear power, pro-Russian party”, he thundered, meaning the hard-Left, which had grabbed the lion’s share of winnable NPF constituencies. Yet he now wants his own candidates to support them.

I watched footage of a large left-wing demonstration in Paris last night. Perhaps the camera angles were unfair, but there were quite a few red flags, while the tricolor was hard to find.

If I had to guess (not very bravely: A lot of people seem to think the same), the RN will be the largest party after Sunday’s vote, but will fall short of an overall majority (289 seats). Under those circumstances, the party’s president, Jordan Bardella, has said that he would not want to be prime minister. Moutet thinks that could change if the RN is within five or ten votes of the magic 289. Strategically that could make sense. The RN has repeatedly emphasized that it has come a long way from its disreputable predecessor, Le Pen senior’s National Front, but saying that in opposition and showing it in government are different things. This could be Bardella’s chance.

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Did The Supreme Court Just Throw Biden A Lifeline? Joe Thinks So

By on July 2nd, 2024

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/07/02/did-the-supreme-court-just-throw-biden-a-lifeline-joe-thinks-so/

In his remarks following the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity, President Joe Biden pretended to be mortified by it. But there’s a reason Biden seemed so energetic and focused Monday night. The Court might just have done him and his reelection campaign a huge favor. At least, Biden thinks so.

In his very brief remarks, Biden called the ruling a “dangerous precedent.” He said it “continues to the Court’s attack on a wide range of long-established legal principles.” He quoted Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s inflammatory opinion which said “With fear for our democracy, I dissent.”  I concur, Biden said.

His performance was a striking contrast from last Thursday’s disaster.

But Biden was actually celebrating this decision because it gave his campaign a shot in the arm it desperately needed. He now has a whole new way to scare voters about Trump.

Biden argued that because the president will “no longer be constrained by the law,” the only limits on executive actions “will be self-imposed by the president alone.”   

Biden, in an obvious attempt to equate himself with George Washington, said it was a display of the first president’s character that he believed presidential power was not absolute and that power resides with the people.

“Now, over 200 years later, today’s Supreme Court decision, once again will depend on the character of the men and women who hold that presidency that are going to define the limits of the power of the  presidency because the law will no longer do it.”

Do you get where he’s going with this?

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