… it may not do him any good. Should the CDU boss stumble over his unsuccessful interview, it would be a victory for the packaging over the content, the distraction over the real thing.
With Tobias Hans, it was not a current heavyweight of the CDU who questioned Friedrich Merz’s suitability as a candidate for chancellor on Tuesday morning. But How the former Saarland Prime Minister derived his harsh judgment, which is shared in such large parts of the CDU that they could actually become dangerous for Merz. According to Hans, the party and faction leader is one loose canon – unpredictable, at least. One never knows whether his statements on key issues will terrify political opponents or his own followers. A successful election campaign cannot be made with such a candidate. Who’s next?
So does Friedrich Merz fail in slow motion on himself, as the “star” says more than asks? Could be. But it would also be the temporary victory of the packaging over the content. And nobody really wants that.
An unrealistic ban
Because one thing seems clear: In the matter of the “fire wall” against the far right, Friedrich Merz was right in his much-reproached ZDF interview. The AfD deputies in the various parliaments can be politically and practically isolated. It has been proven that this works particularly well in the Bundestag and in the state parliaments. It is much more difficult in the city parliaments or district councils, where it is often not about party-politically charged questions, but about garbage disposal, the opening of day care centers or bypasses and the majorities are always being re-formed.
But things get really complicated when the ban on any “collaboration” is also to apply to an elected official. If AfD politicians gain an operationally relevant office, if the person is the office, so to speak, then the ban on cooperation can no longer be maintained with the exclusivity that many Merz critics want to understand. A large number of municipal practitioners and politicians have now fairly attested to the CDU leader’s dilemma.
So if Merz was right on the matter or time will prove him right – the longer, the more – why did he possibly lose his chancellor candidacy on Sunday? Why did “something start to slip” there, as members of the CDU presidium murmur and the party leader himself is likely to suspect?
Dangerous Merz scolding
Merz’ problems are message control and self control. The theory and practice of the demarcation from the AfD are among the most sensitive things that are currently being touched on by the CDU and CSU. The fact that the AfD is also providing elected officials for the first time means that the previous language rules have to be adjusted moderately. The CDU boss recognized this and tried to do it. Alone: If you want to change an important language rule publicly, you should be able to present the new unassailable error-free and seamless. If the apparently badly prepared party leader couldn’t, the storm broke out.
done right, it’s your own fault? Yes, somehow. But his critics are treading on increasingly thin ice. Anyone who now accuses Merz of a scandalous “rightward shift” towards the AfD, or even secret sympathies for cooperation with the right-wing extremists, confirms a dangerous, spreading perception: that the self-proclaimed guardians of the so-called mainstream push everyone into the “Nazi” corner if he or she has a different opinion.
The more it becomes apparent in the near future that Merz has correctly and soberly described the situation on site, the more citizens will ask themselves why so much fuss was made about it – and what their own failures the SPD, FDP and Greens wanted to distract from. If the three traffic light parties got away with it – also thanks to the many Merz critics from its own ranks – it would be a distraction from the real thing in addition to the victory of the packaging over the content.