France's National Front " imagines a great wall to protect white France from immigrants, Europe,

[pampango]

the euro and plutocratic market forces."

http://www.opendemocracy.net/patrice-de-beer/french-left-and-2012

The prospect is that it will be less the battle of ideas than France needs, since both “Sarko” and his rivals - on present form, at least - will offer weary French voters more or less the same recipes as in the past. Yet both sides will also seek to convince people that left and right are still far apart and offer distinct messages. The main responsibility on the left for articulating a clear strategy falls to the Parti Socialiste (PS-Socialist Party), which is less ideologically rigid than it used to be it yet remains much more social-minded than the increasingly conservative right.

The PS remains as dominant on its side as its formidable counterpart the Union pour une Majorité Présidentielle (UMP) does on the right; opinion-polls give the two main parties each over a quarter of votes. But in the French electoral system, where the president is chosen after a two-round contest, every vote counts from the outset in order to guarantee that a contender qualifies for the second round. The awareness of this reality is even more acute on the left since the trauma of 2002, when the traditional left-right polarity was spoiled by a surge in support for the extreme-right Front National (FN) candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen, leaving socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin in the cold.

Perhaps it is not too much to hope that the campaign for 2012 will see French politicians rediscover modesty, step down from their gilded pedestals of privilege and immunity that make the noble art of politics look dirty to everyday people, and refuse to make promises they know they can't uphold. The latter include the fantasy of démondialisation raised by the PS’s Arnaud Montebourg and the PG’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon - a withdrawal from the world whose left-wing populism is as unrealistic as the FN’s right-wing version (which imagines a great wall to protect white France from immigrants, Europe, the euro and plutocratic market forces).

For many years, France claimed with some pride to have “the stupidest right in the world”. Its left has in recent years run the right close in faction-fighting, fossilised thinking, and a lack of boldness. It has eight months to put aside that record and find a new course.

It is safe to say that the US' right has surpassed France's as "the stupidest right in the world". Thank you, teabaggers. We're Number 1!"

[JVS]

1. A maginot line against foreigners!