The Republicans will choose a new president in early December. Three candidates compete, the deputies Eric Ciotti and Aurélien Pradié and the senator Bruno Retailleau. And it is difficult to hear, and even to locate, the right.
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Another six weeks without a leader and still the same question for Les Républicains, six months after the debacle of Valérie Pécresse: where is the right going? “Straight into the wall”, as the gossips say?
It must be recognized that the week that is ending does not necessarily prove them wrong. The proof by two significant events. First the political recuperation of the murder of little Lola. The extreme right seized it, and first Eric Zemmour and his Reconquest party who participated Thursday evening in a demonstration in Paris. Marine Le Pen and the RN have given up associating themselves with it, not without having strongly challenged the government on its immigration policy. As for the elected LRs, many of them first took up the Zemmourian rhetoric. Starting with Eric Ciotti, the favorite of the internal competition, who received official support from Laurent Wauquiez yesterday. He finally judged last night’s demonstration “untimely”, because the parents of the little victim were not in favor of it.
On the one hand, the LR deputies passed a handful of amendments to the finance bill, for example on the ceiling of restaurant tickets or the reduction of taxation for small businesses. On the other hand, they mostly fought against the government. But without going so far as to table a motion of censure or announce that they would vote for that of the RN or that of Nupes.
There are at least two reasons for this big gap: first, the right is not flamboyant and the LR deputies do not at all want to return to the polls quickly. However, if the government falls, Emmanuel Macron dissolves the Assembly and convenes legislative elections. And then, basically, on the ideological level, this weakened right is torn between two more powerful forces. On sovereign issues, immigration and insecurity, it is sucked in by the far right. On economic and social issues, on the other hand, it leans on the side of the majority.
In short, the Republicans no longer really know where they live and their oscillations tirelessly raise the same question: what is the right still for?