Even small-town alliances were enough to provoke nationwide outrage. A country haunted by its history of Nazi collaboration wasn’t going to accept candidates working with Jean-Marie Le Pen, the National Front founder infamous for belittling the significance of the Holocaust.
But the elder Le Pen is dead. His daughter and political heir rebranded the party as the National Rally and has, in little more than a decade, dragged it from the fringes of French politics to the top of most opinion polls.
The National Rally now has more seats in the National Assembly, France’s more powerful lower house of parliament, than any other single political party. Its popularity has pushed Les Républicains further to the political right, to the point that many believe the only thing separating the two is their position on the economy.
Even here, Bardella’s emergence as the likely presidential candidate makes the National Rally a more acceptable partner for Les Républicains. Mainstream conservative business leaders long saw the far right as brutish economic illiterates, but the polished Bardella is engaging in active outreach to the captains of industry. Skeptics like Copé, the former Chirac minister, however, still see Bardella as an outlier when it comes to the National Rally’s economic platform.
Perhaps most critically, polling shows that a majority of French voters on the right of the political spectrum now favor a union of right-wing parties. A survey conducted for French radio station RTL and published Dec. 10 found that two-thirds of right-leaning respondents were in favor of an electoral pact between the National Rally and Les Républicains.
Municipal elections in March are shaping up to be a key test of tolerance for this kind of right-wing union.