Tuesday, December 14, 2021
Person of the week
Merz, the new Milde, is about to win
By Wolfram Weimer
The week of the CDU decision is here. The grassroots end their vote on the new chairman. A victory for Friedrich Merz is looming – there are four reasons for this. One of them has to do with the new tone of mildness.
The CDU is eagerly awaiting the result of the member survey. The 400,000 members will vote by 3 p.m. on Thursday, and the announcement will be made on Friday. If one explores the mood within the party, the following picture emerges: Friedrich Merz has clear support in all East German state associations and a majority in Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate, Lower Saxony and Hamburg. In addition, the medium-sized companies, the elderly, the value conservatives and the economic wing are largely behind him.
Norbert Röttgen has a following in Schleswig-Holstein and Saarland, as well as with parts of the union workforce and the women’s union. The dwindling Merkel network tends towards Helge Braun. The Junge Union and the state associations of Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia are divided.
If you add up the mood, Merz goes into the decision week as the favorite. Röttgen is considered to be his main competitor, Braun is seen as clearly lagging behind. Many party officials even expect Merz to get more votes than his two competitors put together. A runoff election would no longer be necessary.
There are four reasons for the mood:
First the Union longs for leadership and opposition skills. Especially in the current CDU crisis, after the typological fabric softeners like AKK and Laschet, an established leading figure with edges is needed. Someone who is really capable of opposition – which means confrontation and the courage to show one’s own profile. Merz proved exactly that 20 years ago as a parliamentary group leader and reorganized the Union after a similar crisis at the end of the Kohl era. Merz’s clear profile and rhetorical talent have advantages for the Union, especially with a view to the upcoming state election campaigns. Many CDU members hope that Merz will quickly bring the party back into competitive shape because he is considered the most energetic and courageous candidate among the three applicants. His own comeback is viewed as a blueprint for the party’s comeback.
Secondly the election of the chairperson is also about a directional decision. AKK and Laschet largely stood for the continuation of Merkel’s course, which tended towards the left (from the classic CDU point of view). Merz, on the other hand, embodies “pure CDU” – especially in security, migration and economic policy. Of course, many unionists would like to see “pure CDU” back. With her strategy of moving the CDU so far to the left that the SPD at times seemed pirated and superfluous, Angela Merkel has given herself a long power-political advantage. The Union, however, paid for this strategy of shifting the axis with a considerable loss of substance in terms of mandates, members, and content-related positions. The long-term trend towards emaciation with a series of poor election results – already culminating in the 2019 European elections, in which the CDU only achieved a staggering 22.6 percent of the votes (plus 6.3 percent for the CSU). The CDU members, in turn, hope that Merz will bring back many voters, including those who have been lost to the AfD, the FDP and non-voters in recent years.
Third Merz stands for business competence. He enjoys a high reputation among German medium-sized companies (which is very important for the CDU) and in industry. Since the economy is unstable due to the pandemic and inflation is back, millions of jobs are threatened by the change in the auto industry and Asian competition and Germany is struggling with digitization, the longing for a CDU chairman like Ludwig Erhard is growing. The upcoming legislature is also likely to be shaped by whether the new traffic light government can improve Germany’s competitive position or not. The CDU will have to develop and embody an upswing perspective. And here a Merz CDU has advantages over red-green-yellow, which is more likely to have its strengths in social and climate policy.
Fourth You can feel a fairness reflex towards Friedrich Merz within the CDU. For years he has been the top CDU politician with consistently high approval ratings among the bourgeoisie. With Union voters, he was initially clearly ahead of Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer and Jens Spahn. In last year’s surveys, Merz literally outclassed his competitor Armin Laschet, although he had the big stage as Prime Minister of the largest state and in the midst of a pandemic. In both cases, however, the CDU leadership and the Merkel leadership group opposed this majority image of the base and electorate – with devastating consequences. There is therefore a widespread mood within the CDU that this cardinal error must now be corrected in order to restore the integrity of the party and the electorate. It is about “collective satisfaction”.
It helps Friedrich Merz that he showed a significantly more integrative profile in 2021. With age, it appears more balanced. Even in last week’s Maischberger show, he appeared almost fatherly conciliatory against Kevin Kühnert (in earlier times the verbal scraps would have flown). “The new mildness,” some in the CDU are already saying. In fact, the recent appearances are characterized by presidential friendliness. Merz is thus signaling to the party that he is not looking for a solo role but is relying on the team and the breadth of the party. Perhaps he can close the gaps between the wings better than another chairman of the Merkel camp. The appointment of the former Berlin Senator for Social Affairs Mario Czaja – a proven social politician – as a candidate for the post of general secretary has been well received by the party. Against the national trend, Czaja won the Berlin-Marzahn constituency, which was extremely difficult for the CDU and had gone to the left since 1990. Doubles Merz / Czaja are trusted to score against Klingbeil / Kühnert.
Conclusion: The party longs for identity, self-confidence, for profile and its essence. That is what Friedrich Merz embodies. If you ask your followers whether age and the third attempt are not a problem, they will answer: “Joe Biden only became president on the third attempt. And that was 78.” Merz will not be that old until 2033.