Her ally Mario Beaulieu, president of the small but loudly anglophobic Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal, stands faithfully by her side.
But outside of the ranks of the Parti Québécois, almost nobody else supports Pauline Marois's proposal to extend Bill 101 to the CEGEPs.
Marois's isolation on the CEGEPs question increased significantly on Tuesday, when the most popular sovereignist leader distanced himself from her by declining to endorse the proposal.
Ducking behind the suddenly convenient Canadian constitution, Gilles Duceppe pleaded respect for Quebec's jurisdiction to justify his refusal to take a position.
Yet less than a year ago, Duceppe's federal Bloc Québécois joined a nationalist-led coalition opposing the Charest government's proposed legislation on so-called "bridging" schools.
The provincial legislation, since adopted, theoretically allows parents to buy their way around Bill 101's restrictions on admission to publicly funded English primary and secondary schools by sending their children to the unsubsidized "bridging" schools for a few years first.
That recent precedent is what makes Duceppe's refusal to support Marois's position significant.
Duceppe and the Bloc tend to be more moderate than their provincial sovereignist counterparts.
And while right now Marois needs only to appease the PQ convention delegates who will vote on her leadership in less than three weeks, Duceppe needs to appeal to moderately nationalist voters as well as sovereignists in the May 2 federal election.
Three weeks ago, a Léger Marketing-Le Devoir poll suggested that an overwhelming majority of Frenchspeaking Quebecers, 79 per cent, thought that it would be an advantage for Quebec if all its people were bilingual.
So it's not surprising that last month, a Léger Marketing-Gazette poll suggested that a majority of francophones oppose barring francophones and other non-anglophones from English CEGEPs.
Proponents of "CEGEPs 101" argue that the English CEGEPs assimilate non-anglophones into the English-speaking community.
There is no evidence to support that argument.
Last week, La Presse reported that the CSLF, the Quebec government's advisory council on language, will come out against the CEGEPs proposal next week, before the mid-April PQ convention.
As The Gazette's Kevin Dougherty reported three weeks ago, a previously published study by the CSLF says attending English CEGEPs has "practically no impact" in getting non-anglophones to adopt English.
And, the CSLF study says, other so-called demographic "studies" supporting the CEGEPs proposal are "useless, even deceptive."
In fact, even the most often cited of those studies, by an "institute" created to justify new anti-English measures, fails to make the case for CEGEPs 101.
It shows that, while there is a correlation between English CEGEP attendance and linguistic transfers to English, the former is not the cause of the latter, but rather an effect in itself.
Allophones chose English CEGEPs because they had already decided to continue their education and to work in English.
In other words, in 12 years of compulsory primary and secondary schooling in French, Bill 101 had failed to assimilate them.
In anticipation of the language council's position, the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste's Beaulieu has tried to discredit the CSLF by claiming it "lacks independence" from the Charest government.
But since it's been only a year since the council supported Beaulieu's own position on bridging schools against the government, Marois's most prominent ally succeeded only in making himself look either forgetful, or foolish.
dmacpherson@montrealgazette.com
Twitter: @MacphersonGaz