New election of the federal executive board and meeting with the district chairmen: The committee decisions two weeks after the federal election do not answer the question of how the CDU intends to solve its crisis. Above all, nobody can actually meet the requirements for the next chairman.
Nobody can currently accuse the CDU of being a party in the back room. While the three other parties from the middle of the political spectrum exercise maximum discretion as part of their exploratory talks on forming a government, top Christian Democrats are largely negotiating the future of their party in public. There is hardly anyone who is afraid of the microphone and some even try to imitate the incumbent Chancellor: On the weekend, the Bundestag member Philipp Amthor, Junge Union boss Tilman Kuban and Norbert Röttgen confidante Ellen Demuth and other colleagues published an open letter who does not leave a good hair in the content and staffing of the CDU.
The parallel to the guest article by Angela Merkel in the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”, with which the young CDU general secretary started her leap to the top of the party almost 22 years ago, is obvious: Then as now, the Union was at a dead center after 16 years as chancellor arrived: content unclear, staff confused. However, it can be ruled out that one of the authors of the “Welt” contribution to Merkel ‘s heir can be ruled out.
Looking for someone new with authority
And this is exactly where the difference to the state of the CDU in 1999 lies: It is impossible to tell who has the confidence and whom the party could trust to lead it out of one of its worst crises after the historic election debacle. The party must succeed no less than squaring the circle if it wants to regain unity and a clear course in time for the groundbreaking elections in the territorial states of Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Saarland and Schleswig-Holstein: it needs a chairperson instead of Armin Laschet or a chairman who, with internal authority and external reputation, guides the repositioning in terms of content and personnel and who also embodies this himself.
That is a big task for politicians from the second or even third row and an immense risk for the party. After all, after the debacle over the short-term chairmen Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer and Armin Laschet, the third attempt to succeed Merkel at the top of the party must succeed. The CDU grandees draw different conclusions from this realization. After two of the officials’ favorites, Kramp-Karrenbauer and Laschet, failed, the call for greater membership in the Laschet successor cannot be ignored.
For this reason, the Presidium and the Federal Board agreed on Monday to include the district chairpersons in order to clarify with them the question of membership participation in the further personnel search process. If the members were actually asked who should become the new federal chairman, this would – because of the necessary introductions on site – endanger the desired party congress around the turn of the year. Until then, not only the chairman Laschet is a “lame duck”: The entire federal executive board is to be re-elected after less than a year. The CDU is going into the difficult weeks ahead with a guided tour on demand. It is unthinkable if the FDP and the Greens should knock again because of the “Jamaica” option.
Fear of a new ordeal
According to General Secretary Paul Ziemiak, several speakers in the committees advocated a team solution, which Lascht also favors. So everyone should agree on a common candidate. Kramp-Karrenbauer had already tried that in vain. Perhaps it will work now, because there is great fear that the CDU will be faced with another ordeal if there are several applicants for the chairmanship. After all, the CDU chairmanship decisions one and two produced a frustrated loser (Friedrich Merz) and winners who were rejected by parts of the party (AKK and Laschet). This scenario could repeat itself, after all, the traded applicants for the party chairmanship are the losers of the past attempts: Röttgen, Merz and Jens Spahn, whereby Merz has already announced that he will not submit himself to a fight vote at a party congress.
The economic politician, who is so popular on the grassroots level, could be tempted to dare to do it again if a member’s decision – regardless of whether it is binding or not – is made. But Merz also knows: A soon-to-be 66-year-old contradicts the idea of a generation change, which AKK, Peter Altmaier and Merz’s long-time advocate Christian von Stetten, among others, called for at the weekend. Merz would also not be a “new unused head”, as the young CDU representatives demand in their guest post. Röttgen, who is unloved in the Merz warehouse, is now also more of a veteran than an innovator, the star of Laschet supporter Jens Spahn had recently declined.
Which boy wants to get burned?
The call for Carsten Linnemann, on the other hand, can be heard louder and louder, but the internal party opponents of a course that is too economically liberal could see a candidacy from Linnemann, who is head of the CDU SME Association, as a preliminary decision on the future direction of the content. Linnemann, who is considered to be the party’s hope, would again take enormous risks in view of the full range of tasks of the incoming chairman.
The same applies to the other promising boys, Schleswig-Holstein’s Prime Minister Daniel Günther and Saarland’s Prime Minister Tobias Hans: The two must concentrate on their state elections in the coming year. To rebuild a troubled federal party in parallel to a top candidacy, Laschet has visibly lifted himself up. The next CDU chairman is the head of a party that has a very sad prospect in the federal government: The Union is expected to sit on the opposition bench with the AfD and the left for four long years, while the three parties closer to it govern without them. And no matter how well the planned realignment works: There is no guarantee that the Union will find its way back to power in four years.
Who is going, who is coming?
Linnemann and Merz could at least be candidates for the presidium. Günther and Hans already belong to it as Prime Ministers. Julia Klöckner’s seat will definitely be vacant in winter. The future of Paul Ziemiak as Secretary General is likely to be put up for debate after the general election was so disappointing. Whether the blame for the weak campaign of the Chancellor candidate Laschet is actually to be found in the Konrad-Adenauer-Haus in Berlin or rather in the State Chancellery in Düsseldorf is part of the appraisal process announced on Monday.
Wolfgang Schäuble and Volker Bouffier are potentially on the move. The oldest CDU Prime Minister Bouffier and the outgoing Bundestag President Schäuble had pushed through the Chancellor candidate Laschet against the CSU leader, Markus Söder, who was favored by the base. The generational change that has been warned by everyone should therefore not least target these two gentlemen.
People do not replace content
The foreseeable profound personnel changes cannot replace the substantive debate: numerous top representatives of the party have now admitted that the Union was blank in terms of content at the Bundestag election. The processing rounds announced by Ziemiak with candidates who have lost or won their constituencies, as well as the involvement of external consultants should lead to the same result.
While the Greens have set their own priorities with climate change, the SPD with the welfare state and the FDP with relieving the economy and more digitization, the Union wanted a little bit of everything, but nothing really. Or as the guest contribution by the young Christian Democrats said: the Union “too often simply said no in content-related debates without presenting its own alternative concepts”.
No answer to Merkel’s departure
The content-related readjustment is at least as explosive as the chairman’s debate, which is now urgently to be resolved: Large parts of the party base did not agree with the middle course of their long-term chairwoman and permanent Chancellor Merkel. With Friedrich Merz you have linked a return to more conservative social policy and more market liberality. Other favorites of Merkel’s opponents are also distinguished by this promise. The Röttgen camp, on the other hand, refers to the migration of Merkel voters to the SPD and the Greens, who are more likely not to be brought back with a Union that has been polished to its core brand. Söder also wanted to give the Union a greener paint job when it was elected.
In three weeks it will be the third anniversary of Merkel’s announcement that she will not run for chairmanship again. With this step, the CDU leader had not only reacted to weak state election results in Bavaria and Hesse, but also to ongoing criticism from within the party about her course on refugee and European policy issues. Since then, the CDU has not found an answer to the question of how it wants to do it differently from Merkel. Many of those who had prepared to shape the post-Merkel era are now leaving the political stage with the Chancellor: The federal party conference could roughly coincide with the election of Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Who will then try to succeed Merkel in the CDU is completely open today.