Maybe it will be our turn next.
France’s ruling Socialist Party lost its grip on the upper house of Parliament Sunday, its third electoral defeat in six months… Conservative candidates won a large chunk of the 170 seats that were up for re-election, according to preliminary results released by the Senate.
“There is a complete rejection of Socialist policies,” UMP senator Roger Karoutchi told BFM TV.
The preliminary results also highlighted growing support for Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Front, which has seized on widespread popular disillusionment with Mr. Hollande. The National Front won two seats on Sunday—a first for the far-right party, which had never had representatives in the upper house.
“These results are beyond what we hoped for,” said Le Pen. “Each day that passes, our ideas are increasingly being adopted by the French people… We have great potential.”
“There is only one door left for us to push and it is that of the Elysee,” said newly-elected National Front senator Stephane Ravier, referring to the French presidency.
And the NF is picking up support from some surprising quarters.
From the window of his Paris home, Michel Ciardi can see into the waiting room of a government welfare agency where a predominantly Arab and African crowd awaits government checks.
A former communist, Ciardi once believed the scene at the agency was a necessary element of French efforts to help integrate new immigrants. But that changed in 2000 after the second Palestinian intifada triggered a massive increase in anti-Semitic violence, much of it committed by Arab and African immigrants.
The violence was enough to shift his political allegiance to the National Front, a far-right party long demonized by French Jews as anti-Semitic and a threat to republican values.
“I never considered voting National Front,” Ciardi told JTA. “But I realized you need to defend yourself, your community, society and country against those seeking to subdue us.”





















