On the surface, it looked like a normal political assembly. Last Sunday, the hall of the Zenith of Paris was full and the applause was numerous. On television, the cameras showed young people wearing t-shirts in the name of Valérie Pécresse and waving signs and flags. But, on closer inspection, something was amiss.
between the groups of cheerleaders Distributed in strategic places and mobilized for the occasion, the average middle-aged activists seated in the stands remained frozen, staring into space. Most were bored to death. A certain number will slam the door well before the end of the partisan rally.
On a stage in blue, white, red, the candidate of the Republicans (LR) continued her laborious monologue, aligning the slogans as if nothing had happened. Her eyes fixed on the horizon, she might call for a “start” and promise a “new France”, the speaker herself seemed to be impatiently awaiting the end of this painful exercise.
From the memory of a political correspondent, we had rarely seen such a failed assembly in a presidential campaign. Especially since this assembly was not just any. She was the one who was to relaunch a campaign which, for several weeks, had been going through a false flat. After her election to the right-wing primary, the candidate had regained favor in the polls. But since then, nothing. Not a proposal, not a reply, not an image seemed to float.
In political circles, there was talk of a campaign that did not “print”. Within the Republicans, dissensions were beginning to appear. Elected in Paris, the former minister Rachida Dati did not hesitate to describe as ” loser Valérie Pécresse’s campaign director, Patrick Stefanini. A few days earlier, former Minister Éric Woerth, Mayor of Calais, Natacha Bouchart, and former Secretary of State Nora Berra had rallied to Emmanuel Macron. In short, Valérie Pécresse no longer had room for error.
The crossing of curves
The effect of this meeting was immediate. It only took a few days for the curves to intersect and for the LR candidate to find herself slightly behind Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour in three successive polls. “If you want speakers, there are plenty of them in the countryside. Me, I’m a doer,” she said Monday, accusing the media of “machismo” towards her. The president of the Île-de-France region also recalls that the first speeches of candidate Macron were not all successful.
“Have you ever heard a speech by Angela Merkel? It’s boring to death and yet she was a great chancellor, ”replied Senator LR Bruno Retailleau. But the country of Merkel is not that of De Gaulle, as illustrated by the question posed by the editorialist of the daily The echoes : “How to convince without the verb? »
If you want speakers, there are plenty of them in the countryside. Me, I am a doer.
Beyond the form, the malaise remains. And above all, doubt has set in. For most observers, by dint of hunting both on the lands of the centrists of Emmanuel Macron and on those of the conservative nationalists of Éric Zemmour, the candidate is doing the splits. It is indeed difficult to understand how a historical centrist like Jean-Christophe Lagarde, who did not hesitate to say that some could spin “a bullet in the head” of Éric Zemmour, can support the same candidate as Éric Ciotti, who confides that between Macron and Zemmour, he would vote for the latter in the second round.
The “Great Replacement”
But it’s not just the form. Valérie Pécresse also had to suffer a barrage for having, in the turn of a sentence, affirmed that there was “no fatality, neither in the great downgrading nor in the Great Replacement”. These last two words, which designate the submersion of France by an immigrant and Muslim population and which Éric Zemmour repeats in a loop, caused an outcry on the left. On the right, they sowed panic among several supporters of Valérie Pécresse, starting with her former primary opponent and president of the Hauts-de-France region, Xavier Bertrand. On the contrary, Éric Zemmour’s spokesperson, Guillaume Peltier (ex-LR), welcomes this “strategic fault” since it creates, he says, “a form of permit to vote” Zemmour.
At Les Républicains, the embarrassment is at its height. At the microphone of France Info, the former Prime Minister of Jacques Chirac, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, did not dare to say for whom he would call to vote on April 10. At most he was content to say that he was in favor of “a second round Pécresse-Macron”. In short, the minimum service.
Sarkozy’s shadow
Behind this reserve, a shadow hangs over the campaign of the candidate: that of Nicolas Sarkozy. For two weeks, the entire press has been buzzing with comments ” off of the former president stroking his former minister. It “goes all over the place”, “it is non-existent”. “She has a keel, but not a lot of sail”, leaks Le Figaro. More Chiraquian than Sarkozyist, Valérie Pécresse maintains old resentments with Nicolas Sarkozy. In 2015, she had even refused his offer to participate in one of his campaign assemblies for the presidency of Île-de-France.
We know that the former president is a regular at the Élysée and that he has excellent relations with Emmanuel Macron. Two political beasts who both have a thing for transgression. We even suspect Sarkozy, in the event that Valérie Pécresse does not make it to the second round, of putting himself in the position of someone who could, as written The Obsnegotiate “a government agreement that would protect the interests of his camp”.
For many analysts, the political recomposition begun with the election of Emmanuel Macron is only continuing. After the almost disappearance of the Socialist Party, whose candidate Anne Hidalgo stagnates around 3%, many believe that the same fate awaits the Republicans sooner or later. This is also the bet of Éric Zemmour, and his Reconquest movement, which believes that it is the only one able to bring together both LR and National Rally voters.
Anxious to get out of this bad patch as quickly as possible, on Wednesday, on the Twitch network, after her interview on France 2, Valérie Pécresse displayed relaxation by confiding her love of cinema. “I am an absolute ‘cinevore’,” she said. Right now it’s a little hard, I’m not hiding it from you, but in two months I’ll catch up. “As if, after the first round, she would have more free time…