This move was expected, but Macron’s next step was less predictable. In concert with his selection of Philippe, he chose two more Republicans, Bruno Le Maire and Gérald Darmanin, a former aide to Nicolas Sarkozy, to spearhead the economic reforms that will form the centerpiece of his presidency. Le Maire, a smart, youngish, literate technocrat, is cut from the same cloth as Macron and Philippe. As a candidate for the Republican nomination, however, he sought to appeal to the party’s more conservative base, but his wonkish approach to campaigning produced a disappointing fifth-place finish. This poor showing may have convinced him that he had no future in a party whose center-of-gravity seemed to be moving rapidly to the right, if not all the way to the extreme right—a bridge too far for the conservative but cosmopolitan, German-speaking Le Maire.

When it comes to splitting the right, Macron clearly has his eye on more than one of the many fissures in the Republican edifice. That there are so many cracks in what once seemed a solid blue wall is evidence of the damage done by the rise of the FN and Marine Le Pen. While her presidential bid fell short, her nativist nationalism has siphoned off support from the mainstream right, plunging the Republicans into disarray.

The defeat of Fillon, following the elimination of Juppé and Sarkozy in the primary, leaves the Republicans rudderless. Those who have not already thrown in their lot with the new president now have three options. Some, like Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, another failed presidential hopeful, and former prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, favor a selective approach, supporting Macron on some issues, opposing him on others. François Baroin, who has the unenviable task of coordinating his fractured party’s legislative campaign, wants to reconstitute the Republicans as the implacable opposition to “Macronism,” just as its predecessor, the UMP, was the scourge of the Socialists. Finally, Laurent Wauquiez, who will probably become the party’s next leader, is tempted by a more radical third option: to transform the Republicans into a party built around hostility to immigration and a defense of France’s supposedly threatened national identity, with the aim of winning back voters who have defected to the FN.

Meanwhile, the FN is itself beset by internal dissension. Le Pen followed the advice of one of her lieutenants, Florian Philippot, to build her campaign around staunch opposition to the euro and the European Union. Until the final weeks, she remained true to that program but then seemed to hedge as it became clear that many voters sympathetic to her anti-immigrant stance shrank from the prospect of abandoning the euro. Now Philippot has launched his own “Patriots” movement and threatens to quit the FN if the party drops its anti-EU stance.