Both in France and internationally, the increasing alignment of Right-wing politics with voters’ key concerns leaves more moderate, centre-right politicians caught between a rock and a hard place. They can’t criticise Le Pen’s policy programme without downplaying the issues that voters care about most. But to express support or admiration for a campaign promising “rebirth” would amount to recognition of the abject failure of a decade of centrist rule.
Le Pen’s is hardly the first challenge to the centre-right of this kind, with Meloni again a key precedent. Ahead of Italian elections in 2022, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen took an overtly threatening tone, suggesting that the EU was preparing “tools” for punitive action against a future Meloni government. Meloni’s eventual victory showed that voters wouldn’t be intimidated; France’s much greater heft within the EU would make a similar “Project Fear” approach even riskier.
So I don’t know a whole lot about Le Pen, or France, but sitting on this side of the pond, and being at my core a Libertarian who’s rubbed against the realities of the world and it’s people since the early 70s, France, and most of Europe cannot reasonably described as “Centrist” unless one ordered a very narrow window from Mr. Overton’s Windows company.
Let us note that almost all policies have several parts, those include at least the problem, the solution, and the implantation plan.
So, if you are reasonably smart, reasonably well read, and have something of an intellect one CAN criticize most programmes without downplaying the issues associated with them by *acknowledging* the concerns, admitting the problems, but then criticizing the proposed solution and/or the implementation plan.
When doing this it REALLY helps to have an alternative solution that *hasn’t* failed a brazilian times, and that could reasonably be expected to work at least as well as that outlined in the programme under discussion.
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