Some people just can't take 'non' for an answer, can they?

When they tallied up the votes Sunday evening in the snap elections called by France's unpopular diminutive president Emmanuel Macron, it seemed the establishment's worst nightmare had come to pass. In the first round of voting, "right-wing" firebrand Marine LePen's National Rally (RN) party wiped the floor with the opposition, scoring "historic gains," handing her a triumphant victory, and sending a seismic shockwave through the entrenched liberal-leftist parties of the French political landscape.

They were sent reeling in horror.

Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally (RN) party scored historic gains to win the first round of France's parliamentary election on Sunday, exit polls showed, but the final result will depend on days of horsetrading before next week's run-off.

The RN was seen winning around 34% of the vote, exit polls from Ipsos, Ifop, OpinionWay and Elabe showed, in a huge setback for President Emmanuel Macron who had called the snap election after his ticket was trounced by the RN in European Parliament elections earlier this month.

The RN's share of the vote was comfortably ahead of leftist and centrist rivals, including Macron's Together alliance, whose bloc was seen winning 20.5%-23%. The New Popular Front (NFP), a hastily assembled left-wing coalition, was projected to win around 29% of the vote, the exit polls showed.

The exit polls were in line with opinion surveys ahead of the election, and were met with jubilation by Le Pen's supporters. However, they provided little clarity on whether the anti-immigrant, eurosceptic RN will be able to form a government to "cohabit" with the pro-EU Macron after next Sunday's run-off.

 But these are parliamentary elections, and so it ain't over 'til it's over. 

...The RN's chances of winning power next week will depend on the political dealmaking made by its rivals over the coming days. In the past, centre-right and centre-left parties have teamed up to keep the RN from power, but that dynamic, known as the "republican front," is less certain than ever.

If no candidate reaches 50% in the first round, the top two contenders automatically qualify for the second round, as well as all those with 12.5% of registered voters. In the run-off, whoever wins the most votes take the constituency.

High turnout on Sunday suggests France is heading for a record number of three-way run-offs. These generally benefit the RN much more than two-way contests, experts say.

The horsetrading began almost immediately on Sunday night.

The usual suspects took the results as well as you'd expect.

Chaos and mass riots erupted in Paris overnight as thousands of left-wing activists set fires in the streets, vandalized memorials and looted stores.

Rioters were protesting the results of the French election after Marine Le Pen’s victory.

🎥@FreedomNTV pic.twitter.com/93tJrXx3TK

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) July 1, 2024

But this still isn't finished, which seems like a bit of a buzz-kill for the electorate. Especially when it's as frickin' complicated as all get-out.

...According to Ipsos, Ensemble is projected to win a mere 70 to 100 seats—making it likely it will shrink to just the third biggest force in the 577-seat National Assembly. The hard right is in a commanding position after the first round in an election with a record-high turnout. About 65% of the electorate voted—more than at any legislative election since 1997. The remaining Republicans—who have ruled out working with the RN—are projected to win between 41 and 61 seats. Although Mr Macron will remain president, cohabitation (where the president and government are of different political stripes) or indeed a hung parliament could lead to reform slipping backwards. New elections cannot be called for at least a year and his term ends officially in 2027.

The second round of France’s two-round system takes place on July 7th. As things stand, there could be as many as 300 three-way contests. However, when three or more candidates advance to the second round, parties tend to drop out under tactical deals to keep a joint opponent out, leading to only a handful of three-way races. After the final vote the president will appoint a new prime minister. The constitution lays out no criteria by which to do this. Mr Macron could nominate a technocrat or politician, and one in command of a parliamentary majority, or not.

Got all that?

There's tons of maneuvering room for skullduggery, and apparently, that was already in the works about ten minutes after the results were announced.

French candidates make hurried deals to try to stop far-right National Rally from leading government

French opposition parties made hurried deals Tuesday to try to block a landslide victory for Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally in Sunday’s second round of legislative elections, as she said her party would lead the government only if it wins an absolute majority — or close to it.

The National Rally, under party president Jordan Bardella, secured the most votes in the first round of the early legislative elections on June 30 but not enough to claim an overall victory that would allow the formation of France’s first far-right government since World War II.

...An unprecedented number of candidates who qualified for round two from the left-wing alliance of the New Popular Front and from President Emmanuel Macron’s weakened centrists have stepped aside to favor the candidate most likely to win against a National Rally opponent. Several Cabinet ministers were among those who abandoned the race.

...According to a count by French newspaper Le Monde, some 218 candidates supposed to compete in the second round have pulled out. Of those, 130 were on the left and 82 came from the Macron-led centrist alliance Ensemble, it counted. Candidates had until 6 p.m. local time to withdraw.

...“We have one objective today, to deny an absolute majority to the National Rally,” said François Ruffin of the hard-left France Unbowed party that is part of the New Popular Front alliance along with French greens, Socialists and Communists.

Leftists are so good at this sort of thing, are they not? Circumventing the will of the people and imposing their own.

It's SO bad that dissident French Republicans, Les Républicains (LR) - whose leader Eric Ciotti had said he would form a government with LePen should she prevail - decided they would prefer to "welcome" a Communist to beat the RN opponent in one constituency rather than chance losing the seat to RN's candidate.

Infighting has once again flared up within France’s Les Républicains (LR) after a senior figure within the party voiced support for Socialists in the country.

Xavier Bertrand, the LR President of the Hauts-de-France regional council, announced he supported the return of a member of the French Communist Party in one of his local constituencies in the hope of enabling them to beat their National Rally (RN) opponent in the second round of France’s elections on July 7.

That provoked outrage, with the party’s embattled leader Eric Ciotti announcing on July 3 he had started the process of having Bertrand excluded from LR.

None of these people seem to have any regard for what the French people voted for.

I noticed Politico is following their US playbook in Europe. See if this doesn't sound familiar.

I'm sure we've read this story before, only the name was "Trump," wasn't it?

Russia cheers Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in French election

The Russian government seems to have a clear favorite in the French election. Not surprisingly it’s Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally.

“The people of France are seeking a sovereign foreign policy that serves their national interests & a break from the dictate of Washington & Brussels,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry wrote Wednesday in a social media post, accompanied by a photo of Le Pen.

“French officials won’t be able to ignore these profound shifts in the attitudes of the vast majority of citizens,” added the post, which was signed by the ministry’s deputy spokesperson Andrey Nastasin.

Meanwhile, every socialist and communist in France is climbing over rocks to keep her out of power. RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA makes perfect sense, again. 

LePen seems to have acquired a determined and heterogeneous coalition of true undesirables working overtime to deny her what the voters wanted. Oddly enough, most of the coalition members are also those with whom French voters have real problems. LePen's RN has been the only party that meaningfully addressed citizens' concerns.

Supposed "center" allies with the far-left, antisemites and Islamists to stop Marine LePen's RN (right-wing falsely labeled as "far-right"). This is almost the plot of Michel Houellebecq's 2015 novel Soumission (or an early precursor to it). #legislatives2024 https://t.co/XeAriVUyTZ

— Alberto Miguel Fernandez (@AlbertoMiguelF5) July 3, 2024

LePen is calling the tiny French president out on machinations in the countryside and in the bureaucracy while he still controls the government.

...Ms Le Pen yesterday accused president Macron of planning an 'administrative coup d'état', by preparing a number of key appointments in the police and army just days ahead of Sunday's crucial vote.

She said: 'When you want to counter the results of an election by nominating your people to jobs, and when that stops the government from being able to carry out policies which the French people have asked for, I call that an administrative coup d'état.'

There are European ramifications of a LePen win at stake here that no one in Brussels even wants to contemplate, so you can bet there are also EU fingers agitating in much of the political horsetrading going on in France.

If LePen should prevail, agenda items that are very near and dear to Ursula Von der Leyen's cold, cultist heart go POOF. 

...A deal between the Patriot group leaders and the Marine Le Pen-led Rassemblement National is said to have been done in principle. The Patriots’ constituency meeting is understood to have been postponed to July 8 so that it does not clash with the second round of the French elections. The group would then effectively be led by Le Pen and her 30 MEPs, the largest faction. It would become one of the parliament’s largest groups.

Many in the European Parliament, and the Right in particular, are holding their collective breath for the election outcome in France. A victory for Le Pen’s party would, one source said, lift Conservatives above the Council of Ministers ‘blocking minority’ threshold, a combination of votes and population size. “If Le Pen wins and we get a blocking majority in the Council, that is a huge tectonic shift,” one MEP told this website. “That would mean the end of the Green Deal and the Migration Pact”.

So, one can see where any number of parties are heavily invested in divesting the French people of their duly cast election preferences.

In France, meanwhile, it is, as the front page of Les Echos puts it, ”La fin d’un ère” - ”The end of an era”. The paper means it in the sense that Macron is over—the dinky globalist metrosexual called his snap election to demonstrate that Marine Le Pen’s thirty-one-per-cent tally in the Euro-vote was because the citizenry use EU elections as mere protest and that in a meaningful vote for their own National Assembly they would reduce her take to something more manageable. Instead, ”Le Pen’s far-right party” increased its haul, up to thirty-four per cent.

Hopefully, this Sunday, they will have all the underhanded, calculated duplicity handed right back to them in spades.

...So something is approaching critical mass. On the current numbers, the ”far right” would likely fall just a handful shy of a majority (289 seats) in the new parliament. Could the next seven days put them over the finish line? Certainly—especially if the most visible signs of the ”united” resistance are the despised globalist tinpot and the anarchist youth. Nevertheless, a more cautious person might bet on Mme Le Pen coming up just a wee bit short—if only because all the forces of the French elites are determined to stop her.

Whatever happens, the state of France is on them. Since Chirac, no president has won a second term—until Macron two years ago, and he only did it because by then the ”fascist” Le Pen had become leader of the opposition and the only alternative, but still with a low-ish ceiling on her vote. The ceiling has risen, remorselessly, so that last night, as last month, the ”fascists” placed first. The French people, like the Dutch and the Italians and others, keep telling their leaders they want something else, and the Euro-princelings cover their ears and go nya-nya, can’t hear you. The media’s rote descriptor of ”far right” is not really helpful in a France in which virtually the entire map other than a few seething cities has been painted RN. They’re not ”far” at all; they’re getting nearer every day, and they will be nearer still come Sunday.

Hopefully.