In the wake of Marine Le Pen’s second-place finish Sunday, qualifying her for the final round of the French presidential election, the forces of globalism and the entire establishment infrastructure is lining up to denounce the right-wing populist hopeful.

“The divide is no longer between the left and the right,” Le Pen said a campaign speech in February, “but between patriots and globalists.” The reaction to her reaching the runoff on Sunday appears to prove her correct.

“‘I will feel more free, and above partisan considerations.”

“The old and completely rotten Republican Front, which no one wants, and which the French have pushed away with exceptional violence, is trying to coalesce around Mr. Macron,” Le Pen noted on Monday, The New York Times reported.

The “Republican Front” is the name given to the mass tactical voting that has traditionally occurred in France to keep right-wing candidates from taking power.

And indeed, as if by magic, a field of multiple candidates from multiple parties with multiple platforms who all swore up and down that they and they alone have the right vision for France, suddenly agreed that Emmanuel Macron — Le Pen’s left-wing opponent — has the right vision for France.

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“We have to choose what is best for our country,” said failed center-right candidate and self-proclaimed conservative François Fillon before endorsing a former socialist, Macron. “Therefore, there is no choice but to vote against the extreme right, I will vote in favor of Emmanuel Macron,” Fillon said.

One of course wonders what, exactly, makes Le Pen the “extreme right” in Fillon’s eyes, especially considering he spent his campaign trying to appropriate Le Pen’s tough stance on immigration and Islamism, even going as far as to call for placing all mosques under government control.

“There’s a clear distinction to be made between a political adversary and an enemy of the republic,” said failed Socialist candidate Benoît Hamon, who also called on his party to vote for Macron. “This is deadly serious now.”

François Hollande, current president and Hamon’s boss, hailed Macron as “the one who defends the values that enable the French to unite.”

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Interestingly, Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign policy and security chief, said that Macron’s campaign was “the hope and the future of our generation.”

Mogherini is well into her 40s. The majority of actual young French people voted overwhelmingly for non-traditional candidates, opting largely for either Le Pen or her far-left populist rival Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

The question on everyone’s mind, of course, is whether or not the “Republican Front” will hold in 2017 in much the same way it held in 2002, when Jacques Chirac handily beat Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine Le Pen’s controversial father.

Florian Philippot, Le Pen’s top advisor, isn’t so sure. “We’ve been able to impose this idea of patriotism at all levels,” Philippot said during an interview with French TV on Sunday night. “It’s really going to be about private interests against the interests of the nation,” he said, a clear dig at globalist Macron, who also worked as an investment banker for Rothschild & Cie Banque.

However in a surprise move, Le Pen — who has often touted her program of un-villifying the Front National — announced on Monday evening that she was stepping down from her position as leader of the party.

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“This evening I decided to take my leave of the presidency of the Front National,” she told the France 2 television network. “I am no longer the president of the National Front. I am the presidential candidate,” she said. “‘I will feel more free, and above partisan considerations.”

Le Pen’s move could be an attempt to reach out to a wider array of voters, but some political observers suggest her decision is an effort to distance herself from the party, and an indication that Le Pen herself isn’t so sure that her program of de-demonization has been fully successful.

Le Pen is “[s]hedding tainted NF badge of dishonour & going for wider popular vote as pure ‘presidential candidate Marine Le Pen,'” tweeted commentator Piers Morgan.