From last night’s Special Report with Brit Hume:

—On the French Elections—

MORT KONDRACKE: Well, I — you know, He was trying to say that [Segolene Royal] is not ready for primetime or national leadership. And, you know, I think she handled herself perfectly well. I mean, she fought back at him and stuff like that. She didn’t really lose her cool or composure. She was angry. But look, that’s drama criticism. The fact is that France is really at a crossroads here. It’s got the highest unemployment rate of any major country in Europe. It’s this stupid 35-hour workweek. It’s an unemployment rate of 8.4 percent. . . .
Fifty percent of its GDP is government. And so it really is at a crossroads and Sarkozy is saying cut taxes from 60 percent, top rate, to 50 percent, not big, but some. He’s not getting rid of the 35-hour workweek, but not tax money that’s earned after 35 hours workweek, thereby encouraging extra work, and so on. So, he’s the conservative and she wants more government spending, more — raise the minimum wage and all that stuff, which would bog down the economy. The polls suggest that the French are now ready to take a capitalist turn.
MARA LIASSON: Look, the exchange in the debate, which was wonderful theater, looked like a kind of classic tactic that you use against a female candidate, especially in France where the notion of — she’s an absolutely revolutionary candidate. Women are represented in the parliament there in much smaller numbers than elsewhere in Europe, but to suggest that she’s somehow imbalanced or doesn’t have the emotional stability to do this. Other than that, I think the big question in the French election now is, who will this third centrist candidate throw his support to? He hasn’t endorsed anybody yet. He said he wouldn’t vote for Sarkozy. . . .
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Eighty-eight percent have said that their vote is already decided. And he’s pretty much ahead and he wouldn’t only have effect on domestic issues, he would have a huge effect on us. Because he is as pro-American as you will ever find, not only in France, but in any of old Europe. And that would be a huge shift in the center of gravity of Europe. After all, Eastern Europe is fairly pro-American. The Poles, for instance, are taking our missiles, have helped us in Iraq, remember who liberated them; the French have forgotten. He remembers, he’s the son of Hungarian refugees. He’s quite pro-American.
And if you have him and the shift that you had in Germany where the Merkel is pro-American than her predecessor, Schroeder. You have Brown who will succeed Blair in London, who’s reasonably pro-American. That would help us a lot in negotiations with Iran, with the Palestinians, on Lebanon, and especially on Iraq.
I think it would have a huge affect on us if the impediment that the French had been under, Chirac, he saw his role as a Gaullist, of stopping us, checking us, in fact, humiliating us, if possibly, in all parts of the world. You take that away and you substitute a Sarkozy, I think it will have a huge affect on us. So, it’s an important election from the American perspective.

Even more here.