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    Marine Le Pen is no Sarah Palin

    By David Seaton on Sun, 07/10/2011 - 1:12pm |

    Marine Le Pen is the leader of France's National Front. Right now polls show her probably eliminating Nicholas Sarkozy in the first round of France's next presidential elections and facing a lackluster, Socialist, Martine Aubry, running as a hurried replacement for shop-soiled Dominique Strauss-Kahn  in the final runoff.

    Le Pen probably won't win, but before she loses, she is going to give a lot of people in power the fright of their lives.

    Le Pen is a populist of the extreme right, someone who appeals to the disenchanted and stagnant middle classes and to working people struggling not to slide off into social exclusion in the present crisis. A glib American observer might be tempted to compare her with Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann, but, despite their having similar constituencies, in contrast with Palin and Bachmann, this lady is nothing to laugh about.

    The following snippet from Der Spiegel's English edition, will give you a taste of the style and the reality of Marine Le Pen:

    Using her notes instead of a prepared speech, she speaks in short, hard-hitting sentences. She talks about issues like the loss of buying power, and about people who have no more than €50 or €100 ($71.50 or $143) left over at the end of each month. She warns against refugees from Tunisia, and against immigrants in general. She demands social welfare systems for the French instead of for immigrants. And then she finally gets to her central issue: the fight against globalization, which Le Pen says is destroying France. She wants to leave the euro, reintroduce customs borders and nationalize banks. Her vision is the antithesis of a Europe that hardly anyone, even in France, believes in anymore. "What are the others, the conservatives and the socialists, proposing? Nothing! They are busy fighting the National Front!" She rants and she is audacious, unlike the well-trained spin doctors normally seen on television, and she appeals to many people. "Elections are sexual affairs," the author Christine Angot wrote recently in the daily newspaper Libération. "Marine Le Pen appeals to 20 percent of us and fascinates 80 percent. A mannish woman, phallic, we like that. A woman who dominates her father and gets better results." Der Spiegel

    Whew, now that is change you can believe in!

    Marine Le Pen is a sinister lady for sure, but what you see is what you get... when you compare her to American politicians, even, or especially to a pair of clowns like Palin and Bachman, American politics seems like a Punch and Judy show, with one puppeteer doing all the voices and the same hands up all the puppet's bottoms. 

    And it's not just Palin and Bachman, even president Obama, who was once sold as a sort of medicine show cure-all, about to re-found the Republic in progressive righteousness, has turned out to be a damp squib... to put it mildly.

    Even the ballsiest lady in US politics, Hillary Clinton, is basically somebody's wife, with no fighting agenda anybody could locate in a dimly lit room. No, there is no American equivalent to Marine Le Pen. And despite this in-definition, the system seems paralyzed by partisan conflict... Most puzzling.

    The question is really: is this all embracing, bland, gummed up, impassive, unmovable phoniness, where everything changes in order that things never change, finally the genius of our system or its ruin?

    Crossposted from: http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/

    Comments

    Looks like you bought the lamestream media's caricatures of Palin and Bachmann. Where is your intellectual curiosity?


    by Sissy Willis (not verified) on Sun, 07/10/2011 - 3:54pm

    I'm sorry... aren't they as dumb as their remarks would lead one to believe?


    by David Seaton on Sun, 07/10/2011 - 3:57pm

    What remarks make Palin or Bachman seem dumb? “I can see Russia from my back door.”? Palin didn’t say that,  Tina Fey did. Palin said, “you can actually see Russia from land in Alaska.” And you can.

    Did you mean “Within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence that they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.”? Sounds like a reasoned and rational statement to me.

    Did you mean her rendition of Paul Revere’s ride? That was proven accurate by numerous respected historians.

    As for Bachman, did you mean her remark that she has the spirit of John Wayne, but referred to the wrong place of birth? Yeah she stepped in it there, but it was a minor mistake. She is one sharp politician and we all make mistakes. I didn’t hear any left-wingers condemning Pres. Obama when he said there are 57 states; they gave him a pass saying he was just tired from campaigning.

    The only other thing I can think of that Bachman was raked over the coals about was her claim that John Quincy Adams was a founding father. I think that argument can be made. He was right in the thick of the American Revolution as a secretary to his father; he saw the Revolution begin and end and played a part in it. Who says he can’t be a founding father just because he was a young boy at that time? People nit-pick instead of respecting the main idea that was put forward.


    by Richard (not verified) on Sun, 07/10/2011 - 6:15pm

    Listen my children and you shall hear ...

    "He who warned, uh, the British that they weren’t gonna be takin’ away our arms, uh, by ringing those bells, and um, makin' sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be sure and we were going to be free, and we were going to be armed."


    by Donal on Sun, 07/10/2011 - 7:06pm

    All entirely factual.  I put it up on Wikipedia myself.


    by Michael Maiello on Sun, 07/10/2011 - 7:09pm

    "Did you mean her rendition of Paul Revere’s ride? That was proven accurate by numerous respected historians ..."   

    By numerous respected historians, I assume you mean the interns on her staff. 

    Nice try, Mr. Reputation-Defender... Now, quick, off you go to defend Grover Norquist from his being called a soul-less dweep on The Huffington Post site.  

    It must be a very sad job to have, defending the reps of Repugs on the internet.  

    You spin so much your pants keep catching fire.  hahahaha.


    by MrSmith1 on Sun, 07/10/2011 - 11:53pm

    Oh, dear.  The lamestream media.  Hateful, aren't they, those scamps who keep showing video of Palin and Bachmann talking.  Would that Sarah and Michele (and you) could pretend they didn't say what's right there in front of us.  

    But it's video. 

    There it is.


    by Ramona on Sun, 07/10/2011 - 5:43pm

    When I see things like this, it makes me think the left is screwing up.  Nationalizing the banks and taking control of their own monetary policy might actually be a good idea.  Sadly, it's tied up with all the racism here.


    by Michael Maiello on Sun, 07/10/2011 - 6:40pm

    Le Pen is taking over a lot of political real estate that the left has abandoned.


    by David Seaton on Mon, 07/11/2011 - 1:21am

    Yes, and that's the problem on this side of the Atlantic, too, isn't it.

    Subtract Dick Armey and the Koch brothers and all their ilk from the Tea Party, take away the racist sub-text, and we are left with large numbers of the working class who are disappointed and confused by what has happened to America's promise of a better future for everyone, and who are casting around for leadership.

    The left has not provided that leadership. The far right has.

    Yes, it's three-card-monty leadership, and we can decry it all day long, as we do, ad infinitum and with little result.

    But until liberals regain control of the Democratic Party, from the bottom up, or break off and form their own party, we will leave all of that political real estate to the depredations of the plutocrats of both parties who run the country.


    by Red Planet on Mon, 07/11/2011 - 12:31pm

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