Mr. Fillon has another problem: He is a conventional candidate. His conservative cultural values are tied to a business-friendly agenda not so different from Mr. Macron’s. He supports the EU. Against Marine Le Pen and her National Front, he will never appear as the candidate of real change.
Ms. Le Pen promises a referendum within six months on taking back sovereignty from the EU. “Our battle for sovereignty is primary,” she said in Lyon in February. “Essential. Cardinal…Without sovereignty, all projects are broken promises. My opponents claim they can control the border, revoke birthright citizenship, slow immigration, fight unfair trade…They are lying to you. As long as they do not break the shackles of the European Union, which holds the authority on these matters, they are ruling out any change, even minor.”
She is right, which makes her the more robust alternative to Mr. Macron. Her resistance to Mr. Hollande’s competitiveness agenda has won her the allegiance, polls say, of 44% of those who call themselves working-class. Ms. Le Pen has made an effort to rid her party of official bigotry, going so far as to expel her now-estranged father.
But she is still the radical in the race. In Marseille on Wednesday, she promised a moratorium on immigration and a fight against the application of Islamic religious law in France. She urged a “national insurrection”—a democratic one—to recover the country’s lost “grandeur,” while crowds chanted, “France for the French.”
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