Reasonable work against AfD
Haseloff: The CDU must succeed in delimiting itself from the fringes
07/16/2023, 4:10 p.m
According to Prime Minister Haseloff, the CDU should not explore how it could cooperate with the parties on the left and right. He called on the traffic light coalition in Berlin to work properly technically. If all Democrats did this, you could also win back the majority of AfD voters.
Saxony-Anhalt’s Prime Minister Reiner Haseloff has rejected cooperation with the Left Party as well as cooperation with the AfD. “It is an elixir of survival for our CDU here in the country that we can separate ourselves from the fringes without equating the far left and the far right,” he said.Süddeutsche Zeitung“.
Even if it could be difficult to form democratic majorities, the CDU should not soften its program. “As the CDU, we need a decent range – from the social wing to the economic wing – to address large parts of the population.” A debate about where the CDU could imagine cooperation due to difficult circumstances and where not is not productive. Haseloff rejected the suggestion of the former Thuringian CDU state leader Mike Mohring not to refuse talks with the Left Party.
In the direction of the traffic light coalition in Berlin, the prime minister warned against losing further trust in the population through technical errors in government work. The long-term public dispute in the traffic light over the heating law has created a lot of uncertainty and concern among people who are not doing so well financially, he said.
The topics addressed by the traffic light are not wrong. “Of course there has to be a turnaround in heat, of course there has to be a turnaround in mobility,” said Haseloff. “But I have to make sure that a society of 84 million people is still able to understand all of this. It can’t be the case that you steer a tanker so frantically that people fall over the railing.”
“The majority vote for the AfD in protest”
“The mood is so heated that the AfD doesn’t have to do anything anymore. They just have to wait for the next mistake,” said the CDU politician. It isn’t helpful to use the media to argue and “drive people completely crazy”.
He also said: “The majority vote for the AfD in protest, and if we work sensibly, we’ll get these voters back. We have to attack the hard core politically cleanly.” The AfD is “temporarily more successful in the east” because society is more fragile here and standards such as income and pensions are lower. The AfD found the breeding ground in the east on which it could grow. “Here, people experienced ruptures that no West German born after 1945 knows.”
The CDU emerged as the strongest force in the 2021 state elections, ahead of the AfD. Haseloff, now 69, is currently leading a coalition with the SPD and FDP. He has been Prime Minister since 2011. The next state election is expected to be in spring 2026.