Édouard Philippe, the current favorite (but see below) among non-RN right-wing presidential candidates, tried to steal a march on his leading competitors by inviting them to lunch. Smelling a rat rather than a soufflé, Bruno Retailleau declined the invitation. But as the field of contenders has continued to swell, Retailleau has become less picky about accepting luncheon invitations. He has agreed to break bread with the sulfurous Robert Ménard, who was elected mayor of Béziers with the support of Le Pen’s RN, and with David Lisnard, the burkini-banning president of the Association of French Mayors. It was Ménard who initiated this encounter, no doubt because he is as eager as his guests to derail Philippe’s candidacy. When Ménard was tried recently in Montpellier for refusing to preside over the marriage of a French woman to an Algerian man slated for deportation, both Retailleau and Lisnard appeared in court to testify in his favor.
This unholy trinity thus represents the RN-compatible wing of the center-right, which can no longer be called “mainstream” or “governmental.” In contrast, Philippe and Attal, both former prime ministers under Macron, embody what remains of the Macroniste wing of Les Républicains. We need new names for these emerging segments of the right, so let’s call the trinity, with a nod to their outspoken France-for-the-French affinities, the Saviors of the Fatherland; the dynamic duo of Philippe and Attal, who despite being tarred as Macronistes hate Macron every bit as much as the Saviors, might be called the Technocratic Tap Dancers. The tune they are trying to tap actually harmonizes nicely with the Saviors’ anthem: both sets of politicians are trying hard to give center-right voters who have gone over to the far right a reason to vote for them by thumping loudly on the theme of immigration, or, rather, the need to control, suppress, and/or reverse the immigrant flow. Beneath the superficial rhetorical similarity, however, lie deep temperamental differences. The Saviors are able to lunch together because their commitment to the cause is more visceral, less calculated. They wouldn’t be comfortable at the same table with the Dancers, whom they regard as hypocrites as well as fools, who fail to see the handwriting on the wall, the message of which is that the traditional right is about to be submerged by the populist wave. Indeed, the decks are already awash, and the order of the day is Sauve qui peut. Exactly how this rescue might be accomplished will no doubt feature as the chief subject of the upcoming luncheon.
Meanwhile, the skies are darkening above the Tap Dancers. The polls have barely begun to waver (and far be it from me to over-react to what may well be mere statistical noise), but since Glucksmann’s victory in the Socialist primary, he’s picked up a point on Attal, while Mélenchon has gained a point ahead of Philippe. While second-round polling still shows Mélenchon miserably trailing all other contenders against Le Pen, Philippe no longer stands out from the pack: Retailleau, Attal, and Glucksmann all run essentially neck-and-neck at this point–admittedly still quite a long way before election day. The point is that there is no obvious front-runner and therefore no pressure–from the polls at any rate–for anyone to get out of the race. The game at this stage will be to line up collaborators and financial backers. The important maneuvers are taking place behind closed doors, and outside observers have no idea of what is being said, what promises are being made, who is agreeing to support whom in return for future favors. So we are reduced to Kremlinology, to observing who is willing to lunch with whom, to testify on whose behalf, to pose for photographs, to drop this name with a smile while turning up one’s nose at that one.
