Recollected, they stand in front of the white and sober tomb of General de Gaulle. Next to them are the interim president of the party, Annie Genevard, and the president of the Senate, Gérard Larcher, who had the idea for this family photo in Colombey-les-deux-Eglises (Haute-Marne) . This November 9, fifty-two years after the death of the man of June 18, what are Eric Ciotti, Aurélien Pradié and Bruno Retailleau, the three presidential candidates of the Les Républicains (LR) party thinking?
By the weight of the inheritance, no doubt; to the Gaullist values claimed today by everyone, even by the extreme right; to the litany of defeats suffered since 2012… To all that of course. But also to the heavy responsibility that will rest on the shoulders of one of them in a few days.
“For five years, some have been predicting certain death for us, Macron and the National Rally [RN] want to sell us by the cut, but we remain standing in the face of this existential question, it is our dutysummarizes Annie Genevard. Because the day when the right is no longer there, there will only be extremes to ensure alternation and the whole political landscape will collapse. »
A force of attraction?
The slow agony or the rebound… For the right, the years to come are crucial and the work of reconstruction begins this weekend. Saturday December 3 and Sunday December 4, 91,110 LR members will therefore have to choose their new president, during the first round of this internal ballot, before a possible second round, on December 10 and 11.
In front of them, a field of ruins. After three defeats in the presidential election, including the last two in the first round, the LR group in the National Assembly, made up of sixty-two deputies, is no longer even the leading opposition group, supplanted by the populist push of the RN (89 elected).
Fleeing defeats and rightism, the heirs of Juppeism joined Emmanuel Macron in dreaming of succeeding him, like former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe. On the other side of the spectrum, Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour attracted disappointed executives and voters. In the middle of this landscape in permanent recomposition, the LR party is only one of the components of a family scattered across the four corners of the Ve Republic.
“The right of 2016 was Alain Juppé, François Fillon and Nicolas Sarkozy. In 2022, where is the right? At Macron, at LR, with Edouard Philippe, with Gérald Darmanin, a bit at Eric Zemmouranalyzes Guillaume Larrivé, former MP for Yonne defeated in the June legislative elections. The split is huge and it is a risk for the future alternation since Macron will not stand again. »
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