{"id":180378,"date":"2017-05-07T18:06:00","date_gmt":"2017-05-07T23:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/05\/07\/how-can-you-govern-a-country-which-has-two-hundred-and-forty-six-varieties-of-cheese\/"},"modified":"2017-05-07T18:06:00","modified_gmt":"2017-05-07T23:06:00","slug":"how-can-you-govern-a-country-which-has-two-hundred-and-forty-six-varieties-of-cheese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/05\/07\/how-can-you-govern-a-country-which-has-two-hundred-and-forty-six-varieties-of-cheese\/","title":{"rendered":"How Can You Govern a Country Which Has Two Hundred and Forty-Six Varieties of Cheese?*"},"content":{"rendered":"

Emnanuel Macron defeated Marine le Pen in the French Presidential elections, and it wasn’t even close<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The pro-EU centrist Emmanuel Macron<\/a> has won the French presidency in a decisive victory over the far-right Front National leader, Marine Le Pen, and vowed to unite a divided and fractured France.<\/p>\n

Macron, 39, a former economy minister who ran as a \u201cneither left nor right\u201d independent promising to shake up the French political system, took 65.1% to Le Pen\u2019s 34.9%, according to initial projections from early counts. <\/span>
<\/span> \u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span> Despite the wide margin of the final result, Le Pen\u2019s score nonetheless marked a historic high for the French far right. Even after a lacklustre campaign that ended with a calamitous performance in the final TV debate, she was projected to have taken almost 11m votes, double that of her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, when he reached the presidential run-off in 2002. The anti-immigration, anti-EU Front National\u2019s supporters asserted that the party had a central place as an opposition force in France.<\/span>

<\/span> Turnout was the lowest in more than 40 years. Almost one-third of voters chose neither Macron nor Le Pen, with 12 million abstaining and 4.2 million spoiling ballot papers.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In 2002, le Pen pere<\/i> got 17.8% of the vote, so this is an improvement, but still a blow-out.<\/p>\n

It’s a loss, but it is a major<\/b> improvement, and she picked up 15% from what she got in the first round, as versus a roughly 1% that Jean le Pen gained in the 2002 2nd<\/sup> round.<\/p>\n

I do not think that this trend has reached its high water mark, this will continue until the EU fixes some very serious problem:<\/p>\n