{"id":99758,"date":"2025-05-14T03:35:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-14T03:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/99758\/"},"modified":"2025-05-14T03:35:08","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T03:35:08","slug":"from-medieval-role-player-to-french-presidential-hopeful-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/99758\/","title":{"rendered":"From medieval role player to French presidential hopeful \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The gathering in the well-off Paris suburb of V\u00e9lizy-Villacoublay<strong> <\/strong>was a stop on Retailleau\u2019s campaign tour to become the next leader of Les R\u00e9publicains, the once-dominant center-right party. The successors to Charles de Gaulle have now been relegated to political purgatory after the election of Emmanuel Macron upended France\u2019s political landscape.<\/p>\n<p>The vote to appoint the next leader on Saturday is only open to about 100,000 of Les R\u00e9publicains\u2019 card-carrying members, but the electric atmosphere that night and during Retailleau\u2019s other campaign stops is encouraging party insiders to dare to hope they have finally found someone who can challenge Marine Le Pen of the National Rally to be France\u2019s most powerful right-wing politician \u2014 and, potentially, win the presidency.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe haven\u2019t seen this much enthusiasm since [former President Nicolas] Sarkozy,\u201d said a campaign official, granted anonymity due to internal campaign protocol.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>With France\u2019s next presidential election less than two years away, Les R\u00e9publicains are dreaming of a return to power behind a candidate who fuses economic liberalism with an anti-immigration policy that veers close to that of the far-right National Rally, but without Le Pen\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/marine-le-pen-rule-appeal-summer-president-election\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">legal<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/marine-le-pen-trial-sentence-jean-marie-france-far-right-politics-jordan-bardella-national-rally\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">historical baggage<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>For the moment, Retailleau seems to be that man, primed to capitalize on France and Europe\u2019s shift to the right. But he\u2019s an enigmatic figure. The bespectacled 64-year-old practicing Catholic languished for years on the backbenches and sheds his somewhat bookish, studious persona each time he steps up on stage as a fiery culture warrior.<\/p>\n<p>Little surprise then that he has a pedigree in play-acting and dressing up. Before imagining Retailleau amid the gilded interiors of the Elys\u00e9e, we should take a trip back to a dilapidated castle more than 300 kilometers southwest of Paris to understand how he developed his political identity \u2014 and learned a thing or two about the dark arts of showmanship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The gathering in the well-off Paris suburb of V\u00e9lizy-Villacoublay was a stop on Retailleau\u2019s campaign tour to become&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99759,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[33,34,2000,299,1105,36,46326,38,40,33183,29774,46327,43,44,33182,46328],"class_list":{"0":"post-99758","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-elections","9":"tag-emmanuel-macron","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-far-right","13":"tag-france","14":"tag-francois-fillon","15":"tag-french-politics","16":"tag-immigration","17":"tag-jacques-chirac","18":"tag-jean-marie-le-pen","19":"tag-laurent-wauquiez","20":"tag-macron","21":"tag-marine-le-pen","22":"tag-nicolas-sarkozy","23":"tag-valerie-pecresse"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114504094684881941","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}