And why not a bid by Jean-Pierre Raffarin, increasingly at ease as Mr Chirac's prime minister?
But so far Jean-Pierre Raffarin's government has shown little readiness to give much ground.
His new message is that he wants to push that government, headed by Jean-Pierre Raffarin, to its limits.
Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin insists that French law specifies that marriage can only be between a man and a woman.
Later on Wednesday, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin will attend a religious ceremony to honour the victims' memory at the American Cathedral in Paris.
In France, the newly elected right-wing government, with Jean-Pierre Raffarin as prime minister under President Jacques Chirac, has more privatisation options than most.
Under Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the previous centre-right prime minister, reforms of both public-sector pensions and public health-insurance were pushed through despite demonstrations and strikes.
France's prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, said that he would refuse to back down but gave ground in a separate dispute with striking teachers.
Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the previous prime minister, never recovered his credibility after thousands died while ministers were on holiday during a heatwave in the summer of 2003.
Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the interim Prime Minister, has, as expected, been asked to form the new Government: his calm, unfussy and low-profile approach has won widespread approval.
Jean-Pierre Raffarin, France's centre-right prime minister, had originally decided to sacrifice this public holiday after the summer canicule (heatwave) in 2003, in which 15, 000 people died, many of them elderly.
ECONOMIST: A row over Pentecost further sours the French public's mood
So sensitive is the matter that Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the French prime minister, and Nicolas Sarkozy, his finance minister, postponed a meeting on industrial policy this week with their German counterparts.
But even this is not something that Mr Chirac's present centre-right government, under Jean-Pierre Raffarin, has been in any rush to dismantle: its reforms have loosened the rules, not overturned them.
France's President Jacques Chirac has already pushed his prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin , to fall on his own sword, replacing him with the loyal and statist Dominique de Villepin .
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