If things are going well, the lobbying should mostly be over by now. Each of National's 33 MPs should have made up their minds.
Their choice for leader should be Christopher Luxon.
It's not to say he will be their choice. The Nats have a track record lately ofgetting things badly wrong.
It's not to say he's actually ended up putting his name in the mix. But he should. Because he is now so widely regarded as a future leader that he will keep making any other choice look like a placeholder until he's chosen. That by itself is destabilising.
Luxon is not a perfect option. But right now there are no perfect options in a depleted and brand-damaged National caucus.
Shane Reti is too serious and got his hands too dirty helping Judith Collins in her hit job this week. Mark Mitchell is probably not really running, again. Chris Bishop needs more time to rehab his reputation after being a key hitman in the Muller coup.
This time last week Bridges was a serious option. But that was before Collins committed political murder-suicide on Wednesday night.
She set fire to the National Party, reminding voters that this is a party that likes to set fire to itself frequently these days. Bridges' problem is he got a bit singed. And he's been singed quite a few times now: the Jami-Lee Ross meltdown, the Muller coup, Bridges himself smirking on TV about leadership rumours, now the Collins attack.
Voters who want reassurance that National's fire-setting days are over are not going to be convinced by a guy covered in burns and smudges of soot.
National MP Christopher Luxon during his caucus standup in Parliament, Wellington. Photo / Mark Mitchell
National needs a fresh, clean leader. That is the very - and most important - thing that Luxon offers. He has no baggage.
But he is a risk. He's extremely inexperienced after only one year in Parliament. The worry for National MPs is that he bombs under pressure like Todd Muller did. Labour will try its hardest to make that happen.
Luxon's inexperience also means he won't have a finely-tuned political gut for knowing what riles or rattles Kiwis. He won't know how to drive issues or run attack lines.
He's smart. He's spent years swotting politics. He takes advice from Sir John Key. All of that will help, but it can only go so far. Actual experience is the only real classroom.
Pundits are tying themselves up in knots trying to find the perfect male-female combo, urban-rural combo and conservative-liberal combo. None of that matters to voters as much as they think.
In the middle of a pandemic, with growing frustration at the Government, what matters much more is competence, experience and stability.
Stability is Bridges' greatest offering in the deputy role. His inclusion would be seen to draw a line under the biggest problem the Nats have had for a year and a half. Disunity.
For the past 16 months, every National leadership combo has been threatened by enemies inside their own caucus setting fires. Voters will be expecting exactly the same troubles for whoever the new leadership combo is.
But if the two strongest contenders unite, it should signal that those problems are largely over.
What's more, Bridges brings all the strengths Luxon lacks: he has experience, he knows how to run attacks and get issues up, he knows exactly what Kiwis care about.
The proof is in the polling. Even while Bridges was personally unpopular, he managed to keep the National Party more popular than the governing Labour party for a solid eight months before Covid changed everything.
National's caucus needs to get this choice right. Voter patience with them is past running out. They won't get many more second chances.
And the mood has changed. Traditional National voters sense that 2023 is a winnable election, if only the party stops playing with matches inside.
