He points to his own record in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, a region he’s run as a sort of mini-state refusing subsidies for jobseekers and slashing operating costs by 5 percent, as the antithesis of Macron-ism. The president, he argues, is making adjustments around the edges and refusing to take on the elephant in the room: public spending that accounts for 55 percent of the country’s GDP. [...]
Where Macron is moderate on public spending, Wauquiez stakes out a position to the right of Margaret Thatcher. Where Macron preaches eurozone integration, Wauquiez wants a “union of nations.” And where Macron is liberal on social issues, Wauquiez is ultra-conservative. [...]
It’s easy to see why that might be so. In 2005, Wauquiez voted in favor of the treaty that would have established an EU constitution, but he has since positioned himself as a Euroskeptic-lite, and sometimes not so lite. After Britain’s vote to leave the EU, he proposed to abolish the European Commission — a position from which he’s since distanced himself. [...]
The National Front party has long seen Wauquiez as a potential ally, someone who could bring the far right out of its isolation. But Wauquiez rebuffed Le Pen’s proposal to join forces this week, stating he would never enter an alliance with the far right.
Instead, he aims to steal Le Pen voters by echoing her tough talk on immigration, Islam and terrorism — he’s called for throwing all people suspected of being linked to terrorists into jail — with the added appeal that unlike her, he could one day end up in power.
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