Editorial Board
France Needs Someone to Stop Le Pen
If the National Front leader won the presidency, the European Union would be badly wounded -- perhaps fatally.
The next most important election.
Photographer: JEAN-PHILIPPE KSIAZEK/AFP/Getty ImagesOn Sunday, France’s Republican Party will choose its candidate for the presidential election next spring. Opinion polls say that the Republicans are so far ahead that the party, in effect, is about to name the next president -- either Alain Juppe or Francois Fillon, former prime ministers offering not-too-dissimilar conservative programs.
The polls, for once, had better be right. The likely alternative to either of those men would be disastrous -- and not just for France.