At RealClearWorld Robert Zaretsky provides a briefing on the French presidential election. His thesis is that there’s a dramatic change going on in French politics:
The second debate on April 4, unlike the first debate, will include all 11 presidential candidates. Despite the enlarged cast, all eyes will be on three candidates — Le Pen, Melenchon, and Macron — none representing one of France’s traditional political parties. Regardless how the debate, and the first round, sorts itself out, politics as usual in France will be the great loser.
A good reason to favor Le Pen.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/marine-le-pens-tricky-alliance-with-donald-trump/2017/03/31/b5e93248-1984-48a8-95fe-0ce585f56017_story.html?utm_term=.2405f40ed3f9
“There is also the issue of the anti-Americanism at the heart of the National Front, which for decades has railed against “American imperialism†abroad and its principal local manifestation — the European Union. If Trump’s isolationist rhetoric represents a departure from decades of U.S. foreign policy, he is still an American president in the eyes of a party long in favor of France abandoning its ties with the United States for a new relationship with Russia.”