2024-09-21 10:33:25
SPD is happy, pollster warns
Reactions to CDU decision: “Merz stands for women in the kitchen”
Updated on 17.09.2024Reading time: 4 min.
The Union has decided on Friedrich Merz as candidate for chancellor and is united. The SPD has prepared for Merz and is looking forward to it. The reactions to Merz’s candidacy for chancellor are summarized.
One year before the federal election, the Union has clarified the candidate question: CDU chairman Friedrich Merz is to stand as the Union’s joint candidate for chancellor – with the express support of CSU leader Markus Söder, who wants to put his own ambitions on hold for the candidacy. The two party leaders announced this on Tuesday at a joint press conference in Berlin. They stated that their common goal was to return to the top of the government.
Like Söder, the rest of the Union is also emphatically united. North Rhine-Westphalia’s Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst said: “With such a signal, we can strengthen trust in democracy again.” Schleswig-Holstein’s Prime Minister Daniel Günther also congratulated Merz and said he would support him with all his strength as a candidate for chancellor. “I want Friedrich Merz to be the next chancellor,” said Günther.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he had prepared himself for CDU leader Friedrich Merz to be the candidate for chancellor. “Otherwise, I have been saying for a long time that I am happy for Mr Merz to be the Union’s candidate for chancellor,” said Scholz on his trip to Central Asia.
According to its federal chairman Lars Klingbeil, his party, the SPD, sees itself as well prepared for the federal election campaign against Merz. “And I can tell you, I’m not afraid. We are well positioned for the election campaign against Friedrich Merz and then we have an opponent that I am happy to accept.” Klingbeil is looking forward to this election campaign. For the SPD, the question will be who has the best concepts for jobs, industrial policy and the future of pensions and how the state can remain capable of taking action.
With an ironic undertone, he added that CDU leader Merz had worked “very intensively” on his own image and his friendship with CSU leader Markus Söder in recent weeks. “He (Merz) has also worked intensively to completely remove Merkel’s policies of recent years and to put the Union on a new course,” said Klingbeil. “So, that will be an exciting debate in the election campaign.”
SPD member of the Bundestag Ralf Stegner warned that Merz should not be underestimated. Nevertheless, the SPD can be happy about his nomination, as the differences with Scholz are clear. He told the Tagesspiegel: “Merz stands for social division and foreign policy adventurism, women in the kitchen.” The SPD wants social cohesion and a prudent peace policy. “Nevertheless, the traffic light coalition must pull itself together, we must not leave peace and migration policy to the populists. In this way, we can get within striking distance of the Union and, in the end, beat Friedrich Merz as the SPD.”
Wissler: Merz is a “type of backward-looking person”
FDP leader Christian Lindner congratulated Friedrich Merz. “After personnel clarity, content clarity should now follow,” he wrote on X. The Free Democrats fought for an economic turnaround and against a debt-ridden state, for freedom and against paternalism. Lindner: “We know a lot of criticism from the Union, but no ideas that could make Germany stronger. So we are curious whether the Union will return to a reform policy like in its Leipzig program or whether it will continue the Merkel era.”
The Left Party’s chairwoman Janine Wissler criticizes Merz’s nomination. “Men who fly to weddings in private jets and want to make a name for themselves with racist remarks on talk shows should not become chancellor,” she told the “Rheinische Post”. Hardly anyone in the CDU embodies the “type of backward-looking person” as much as Merz.