Macron against the Republicans: the other battle on the right

Nicolas Beytout 7:58 am, November 11, 2021

Nicolas Beytout returns this morning to another political battle which began this week in the run-up to the presidential election.

And this battle will also take place on the right.

We have known for a few weeks the fight to the death led by Eric Zemmour against Marine Le Pen.

This all-out war is far from over, it will continue at least until the beginning of next year, and no one knows today who will emerge victorious.

This is the first battle on the right.

The second took consistency this week with the debate on Monday evening between the five candidates for the Republican primary.

This confrontation was softer, it will not last more than three weeks, but each of the debaters is well aware that at the end of this primary, there will be only one left.

This political sequence has moreover had much more impact than one could imagine.

First on the audience of the channel which broadcast this debate: more than 800,000 viewers on average on LCI and a point above a million, it is a very good score (the debate between the finalists of the green primary, under the same conditions, had only gathered 200,000 people in front of their post).

Another visible effect of this debate: the Republican right has shown that it exists.

Since her defeat in the presidential and legislative elections in 2017, she had hardly been heard.

She existed, she had won local elections, but her share of voice in the national debate was tiny.

And is that what could have changed?

Yes, and above all, this right which could not find an angle of attack against Emmanuel Macron showed that it could practice a combative opposition. It was very striking, during the debate, the candidates did not focus their arrows on their opponents of the moment, but on the President of the Republic: he "burned the box", repeated Valérie Pécresse to accuse him of distributing the public money everywhere; he failed in all areas of the regal, accused Eric Ciotti by speaking of uncontrolled immigration and insecurity; he is all wrong, he lacks courage, "he takes us for imbeciles", even bludgeoned Xavier Bertrand, the most aggressive of all. So, I'm not saying that this is all very original, not even very new,but witnessing a group fire like that at an important moment in the presidential campaign, it changes the situation a bit. And naturally, it did not escape the Elysée. The next day, in his address at 8 p.m., the Head of State launched a counter-offensive. A right-wing response to the right-wing attack.

Ah there it is, the new political battle within the right?

Exactly.

It will oppose a President who speaks of the value of work (once, twice, twenty times in his speech), a Head of State who promises (for the first time in 5 years) to raise the legal retirement age retired, which revives nuclear power, which politically assumes to toughen the conditions under which the unemployed are compensated.

And then on the other side, a republican right, which is on exactly the same niches of economic and social policy, but which will lead the charge on the two big weak points of the Macron five-year term: immigration and security.

All have analyzed that France is predominantly on the right, that the political battle will be won on the right, and that there is little risk in stripping its left flank because this left is so weak and dispersed.

Everyone is convinced that the French are both green (worry about the planet), but pro-nuclear (they worry about their energy bill).

In this territory, the two opponents are playing very big: Emmanuel Macron, it is his re-election.

And the right, which had until then been caught in a pincer movement between the head of state and the extreme right, is playing for its survival.