Sunday, November 7th, 2021
Candidate for transition
Why Merz is now the right CDU boss
A comment by Hubertus Volmer
The CDU did not appoint Friedrich Merz as chairman twice, and twice there were good reasons for this decision. Now the situation is different. Now it’s the turn of the conservative camp.
New start with a politician of retirement age? Especially with someone who got back into business after a long break and has no government experience? That can really only go wrong. Or?
The CDU has twice decided against Friedrich Merz as party leader. Even then, his supporters liked him above all because he had been a harsh critic of the Chancellor for years. Within the party, it became what Angela Merkel is for many voters to this day: a projection screen for one’s own wishes and views.
To bet on someone like Merz, on an anti-Merkel, in the election campaign would have been a high risk for the Union. Therefore, party congresses did not elect him twice as CDU chairman, but first Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, then Armin Laschet. Both came from the Merkel wing, both tried to listen to the conservative part of their party, to involve them and to satisfy them. It didn’t work out.
Now it’s the turn of the others
It’s not entirely fair to say that Kramp-Karrenbauer and Laschet failed. The conditions they faced were unusually difficult. But they failed, so now it’s the turn of the others. The others, above all, is Friedrich Merz. He no longer arouses the same enthusiasm among his followers as it did three years ago. But among conservative-economically liberal Christian Democrats, surveys and sentiment reports show that there is no one who would be better received. He actually stands for this part of the party.
The three roots of the CDU, to which the outgoing Chancellor always referred, have long been overlaid by a split in Merkel and Merz camps. Some do not want to lose touch with a changing society. The others see the task of the CDU in representing those who tend to reject these changes.
The attitude to gender-neutral language is an example of the two camps. Merz said in the election campaign that there are more important issues than the gender star, but then came back to it again and again. Laschet, on the other hand, turned against “normal people” in the RTL trio. But he also said that one had to “make men and women visible” linguistically and “be sensitive to other things”.
Hopefully Merz will know himself that he – like everyone who would take over the leadership of the CDU at this point in time – can only be a transitional chairman. We will see whether this transition will be successful or whether the CDU will pick up where the SPD left off two years ago. It will also depend on whether Merz can do what Kramp-Karrenbauer and Laschet did not: to listen to the other wing, to involve them and to satisfy them. If Merz was to be elected and understood his election as a mandate for a conservative march through, then those who warned in 2018 and 2020 that a CDU under Merz would mainly use the SPD and the Greens would be right.