Rural France finally has a voice in a chamber long rigged to shut out patriots by an unfair system of representation. Local officials who actually know these candidates, who watched them govern towns and serve as deputies, handed them their trust, and that trust was earned town by town. Momentum like this doesn't come from Paris salons — it comes from the ground up.
A milestone for the far right in the upper chamber is a warning siren, not a triumph, and treating it as destiny plays right into the strategy. Much of this haul came from a fractured right and left that couldn't be bothered to unite, plus a mainstream right convinced that borrowing extremist themes wins voters back — a strategy that has never once worked. Legitimizing those themes only feeds the beast.
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