Failing to agree on the identity of the best candidate to represent them in the presidential election, The Republicans should at least manage to come together on one thing: the name of the person to find out how to decide between them! It is this Wednesday that the head of the Christian Jacob party must address - before the LR strategic committee - the thorny subject of the choice of his champion for 2022. He will propose to appoint Jean Leonetti to a post of "wise man" in charge of oversee the designation process. The mayor (LR) of Antibes, 72, had already acted as a "blue helmet" (in the words of a relative) the day after the resignation of Laurent Wauquiez in 2019, and assumed the interim leadership of the party, time to elect a new president.
"It is Christian Jacob and Gérard Larcher
(Editor's note: president of the Senate)
who proposed it to him", slips a deputy (LR).
They met for a dinner at the Senate last Wednesday to talk about it, also in the presence of the mayor (LR) of Troyes, François Baroin.
"He has the confidence of everyone, his probity has been proven," greets a senator.
In short: he would not be accused by any aspiring candidate of being biased.
The elected representative also sees favorably that her party "moves" on the question of 2022. Until now, Christian Jacob - whose tirelessly repeated mantra is "one hedge after another" - had been obliged to remember that we would have to wait until after the regional elections to talk about the presidential election.
Not before.
But then, why move now?
"We can no longer procrastinate, we have to get organized!"
The LR vessel has been rocking seriously for a few weeks.
"The sequence in Paca
(Editor's note: the agreement between the outgoing LR Renaud Muselier and LREM)
jostled everyone, ”analyzes a deputy LR.
This episode, which turned into a psychodrama, staged an apparent porosity between the two parties ... everything which the right does not want if it wants to keep chances of shining in the race for the Elysee Palace.
Jacob's party was also shaken to its right: his number 2 Guillaume Peltier created controversy by declaring that he imagined working with the mayor of Béziers, Robert Ménard… displayed support from Marine Le Pen.
“If every two weeks you have to deal with issues like the Peltier streak, it won't be sustainable.
We can no longer procrastinate, we have to get organized!
», Continues the same deputy.
PODCAST.
Regional in PACA: the psychodrama that fractures the right a little more
For many, the risk is to be suffocated on both sides and suffocate before having had time to see 2022. Because without an official leader, the right is vulnerable.
“There are more and more voices who say that we would not be there if we had made progress on the presidential subject.
In the meantime, Jacob took the risk of letting this election go without us.
Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron have already started to gallop, ”grumbled an adviser.
Without necessarily nominating a candidate immediately, but at least showing that he will exist.
"We must hammer home that we will have a presidential candidate," recalls Damien Abad, president of the LR group in the National Assembly.
However, no one believes in a real acceleration on the part of Christian Jacob. If he should evoke a "working method" and the outline of a calendar, he still hopes to be able to do without a primary, and that a "natural" candidate is imposed on all. The Retailleaus, Wauquiez, Pécresse, Barnier, and even Bertrand who claims to be a candidate no matter what, will follow this closely. "We must grit our teeth and weather the storm", intimate the n ° 3 of LR, Aurélien Pradié, who also believes that the time for choice has not come. The storm, meanwhile, has yet to unveil its schedule. And there is nothing to indicate whether LR will ever come out.
