The summer is actually good for a breather in politics. But the CDU and its chairman act without a plan and without luck. Instead of problems with traffic lights, cooperation with the AfD and now also the K question are being discussed. While Scholz enjoys the vacation.
A little symptomatic of the situation of the CDU these days is a sentence that party leader Friedrich Merz said in an interview: “The Union stands by the welfare state without ifs and buts,” and then continued to the newspaper “Merkur”: “But it doesn’t unsustainable when more and more benefits are promised without asking for anything in return from which to work.”
So an “if” and a “but” immediately followed the own statement, which had previously ruled out exactly that. The mockery was not long in coming. That may be a trifle, but it is typical of the statements made by the party leader these days: Justifiable in substance, but unfortunate at best in this way. Even more unfortunate was that his team picked out this sentence of all things, to share it on Twitter.
It wasn’t the chairman’s first misstep. Another example was the statement that the CDU was the “alternative for Germany with substance” – well, an opposition party always wants to be an alternative, that’s in the nature of things. But giving yourself the same name as the right-wing populists raised questions. It was clear that this would spark debate. Was it intentional? Is the CDU under Merz really against the AfD without any ifs and buts? It seems unlikely that someone like Merz would say something like that thoughtlessly.
The same applies to the summer interview that Merz gave to ZDF. What he said there wasn’t all that controversial. He said that the CDU had to work together with the AfD in the cities and communities, and that cooperation was only ruled out in state parliaments and the Bundestag. The simple logic behind it: anyone in the municipal council who wants to decide to renovate a gymnasium roof or fill potholes cannot question that just because the AfD is also in favor of it. The other parties do the same. But the fact that Merz then spoke of having to “shape together” sounded more like a common ground than a clear demarcation.
Bad trend barometer values
The fact that this strategy, if there is one at all, does not go down well with the electorate was once again shown in the current trend barometer from RTL and ntv. The CDU is only 25 percent in the Forsa survey, the AfD remains at 21 percent. Merz’ personal popularity is also catastrophic. Only 17 or 19 percent would choose him directly as chancellor, depending on whether Robert Habeck or Annalena Baerbock ran for the Greens. Merz even lost a point compared to the previous week. It is small consolation that Olaf Scholz does not get more than 22 percent and still sits in the chancellor’s office.
The party actually wanted to get started in terms of content – Merz had already announced this at the beginning of the year in the ntv.de interview and has emphasized it regularly since then. It was also fitting that he removed Mario Czaja as General Secretary and installed Carsten Linnemann instead. He had previously directed the work on the basic program and is much more aggressive than his predecessor. He immediately introduced himself to the public with demands for quick processes against outdoor pool thugs. In doing so, he confirmed the expectations: that he will hit the plaster, also with a view to the rather to very conservative CDU sympathizers.
Merz would then actually have had the opportunity to be more conciliatory himself. That might be helpful in appealing to voters in the center. So far he hasn’t succeeded in making an impact far beyond the borders of the CDU. CDU foreign politician Roderich Kiesewetter had propagated exactly this distribution of roles in “ntv Frühstart”. But the chairman doesn’t seem to want to do that. Instead, he flirted intentionally or unintentionally with the AfD and his parliamentary director Thorsten Frei called for the abolition of the individual right to asylum in favor of fixed quotas. In any case, it is hardly noticeable that Merz himself would now appear more centrally.
After all, there are attempts to set substantive accents: At the weekend, Merz presented a five-point plan together with CSU boss Markus Söder. Urgent issues are addressed in it: energy costs are to be reduced, new bureaucracy is to be stopped, overtime is to be tax-exempt and land transfer tax is to be lowered, and the planned heating law is to be stopped.
And suddenly everyone is talking about the K question again
Secretary General Linnemann advertised that these measures could be implemented immediately. The idea didn’t seem bad at all: if this five-point plan had worked, the Union could have driven the traffic lights in front of it. Like I said, “would have”. Because the effect has not unfolded so far because Söder in his summer interview again gave a little food to the favorite question of the capital press – who will be the Union’s candidate for chancellor.
Actually, as CDU chairman, Merz is the natural candidate. But behind the scenes there is a lot of discussion – NRW Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst is also said to have ambitions. Söder is also a shadow candidate. If he gets a strong result in the state elections in Bavaria in two months, he would at least be back in the conversation. In the ARD he said he didn’t want to run for office. But he made it clear that Merz is not yet set. He said that the K question should not be decided until autumn after the state elections in Thuringia, Brandenburg and Saxony. That made people sit up and take notice, because Merz always says that this should happen in late summer.
According to Söder, the results would then have to be “analyzed very carefully” and “possibly good arguments for the personnel issue” could be found. This is what swipes look like. Merz then struggled to moderate the supposed contradiction between autumn and late summer. Summer doesn’t end until September 23, he argued. That is expected to be after the election dates in East Germany. So Söder says the same thing as he does.
In any case, Olaf Scholz did not have to make any effort to react to attacks from his vacation in Provence. The Union was preoccupied with itself.