Free Republic

<p>Paris -- A day after Jacques Chirac ruffled feathers by advising several Eastern European countries to shut up about the Iraq crisis, a new poll found that more than three-quarters of the French considered their president courageous in bucking Washington's rush to war.</p>

Chirac re-elected in landslide over ultra-right leader Le Pen 05/05/2002 By JOCELYN NOVECK / Associated Press PARIS - President Jacques Chirac was re-elected Sunday in a landslide victory over extreme-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, exit polls showed, after a dramatic presidential race that shook France to its foundations. All three of France's major polling firms gave Mr. Chirac between 81 and 83 percent of the vote, with Mr. Le Pen getting 17 to just over 18 percent. Mr. Chirac's huge victory was helped by a larger turnout than for the April 21 first round, when only 72 percent of...

(CBS) Jean-Marie Le Pen has long been a fixture on the far right of French politics, but when he unexpectedly emerged as the challenger to French President Jacques Chirac, more than a million French citizens took to the streets to protest. Statements over the years like, "I prefer the French to foreigners," have given Le Pen the moniker of a fascist, a racist and a neo Nazi. With the French presidency in his sights for the first time in a career spanning more than four decades in politics, he's now singing a softer tune. HE Spkoe Friday with CBS News...

Analysis: How Le Pen can win By Martin SieffSenior News Analyst From the International Desk Published 4/25/2002 12:44 PM WASHINGTON, April 25 (UPI) -- Let us think the unthinkable. After all, very often, the unthinkable does happen. Can Jean-Marie Le Pen become president of France? Indeed he can. Le Pen can win. As that stickler for precise usage and meaning Abraham Lincoln would have put it, to say that he "can" win is not to say that he "will." Nor is it to say that it is probable that he will win. Incumbent President Jacques Chirac may well indeed...

IF LIFE GIVES YOU LEMONS, MAKE LE MONDE: In a somewhat surprising turn of events and a major embarrassment for the Socialist Party, far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen, and not Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, has advanced to the French presidential runoff against center-right President Jacques Chirac. (French readers, see the Le Monde article here.) (Plug for my favorite news source: The Economist noted this possibility three days ago ('Mr Jospin will be lucky to get 20% in the first round. . . . There could yet be a surge for one of the secondary candidates of the left or...

Right-wing tide surges straight to the heart of EuropeBy Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Brussels (Filed: 22/04/2002) EUROPE'S rising Right-wing tide swept into the core countries of the European Union yesterday, rocking Germany's Social Democrats and threatening France's socialist government.Over the last two years, Austria, Italy, Denmark, Portugal, and Norway have all turned against the centre-Left consensus that had such a lock on Europe during the 1990s, opting instead for law-and-order parties promising tax cuts, deregulation, and a much tougher line on immigrants.But the pace is now quickening as ever more radical figures build mass support, often outflanking the conventional centre-Right...