The sun will soon set on the Acropolis. This Friday, January 14, Valérie Pécresse climbs the hill of the Muses, which overlooks Athens. In 2017, Emmanuel Macron gave a speech on Europe on the nearby hill of the Pnyx. The candidate of the Les Républicains (LR) party disdains the road that leads there, takes a small path on the left, steeper, but which allows you to climb higher. Wrapped up in her campaign “battle dress” – a thick hooded khaki jacket – she contemplates the Parthenon. Then comes back down as fast as it came up.
launched in a « marathon » that she wants to lead “at the speed of a sprint”, in her words, the president of the Ile-de-France region knows that time is running out for her to win the presidential game. The ground remains slippery for the LR candidate, who is seeing the momentum generated by her victory at the party congress erode, now neck and neck with Marine Le Pen in the polls.
Since the launch of her campaign, on January 4, the candidate has been going on trips and themes without really managing to impose a story. After a sequence focused on the sovereign, it will be in the Lot on Wednesday January 19 around rurality and in Puy-en-Velay on Friday January 21 to talk about identity and heritage. Mezzo voce, some elected LRs are starting to worry about a judged campaign “serious” most “classic”, not very inventive on the bottom and sluggish on the form. Some of the troops wonder if it is capable of training and arousing desire, the nerve of war of any presidential election. Stuck between a disruptive and mobile Macron, and a Zemmour who does not shrink from any provocation, she is invited by her people to take more risks to impose her ideas, and organize the debate around her.
His campaign manager recognizes a bad sequence, linked to the internal debate at LR on the health pass and the presidential exit on the non-vaccinated that the head of state has promised to“annoy”. “With this counter-fire, Macron wanted to stifle the debate on his record when the right enters the campaign”, observes Patrick Stefanini, adding that the candidate, who immediately replied with her promise to “bring the Kärcher out of the cellar”, does not intend to “let it go”.
Become a “political beast”
The difficulties also come from his right flank. Pécresse, who had to manage the departure from Zemmour of the deputy of Loir-et-Cher Guillaume Peltier, fears to see the mayor of Chalon-sur-Saône, Gilles Platret, one of the faces of the right wing of the party. The latter, who maintains the vagueness about his intentions, asked to see the candidate this week.
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