2023-07-24 18:28:14
That’s what he gets from wanting to be the better alternative for Germany. Friedrich Merz didn’t say anything that would be reprehensible in any way. Of course, the democratic direct election of a mayor or district administrator must be respected, even if they belong to the AfD. And what else would have to be ensured than that the city and district continue to function? Not a word about cooperation with the AfD, not a word about CDU resolutions being put into perspective, not to mention the fact that other parties at the municipal level could not act differently, unless they wanted to incapacitate themselves and have their community placed under guardianship. One way out would be to abolish direct elections. But nobody wants that (yet).
However, nobody who reacted to Merz wanted to descend into the lowlands of everyday local politics. Because the CDU is to be forced into a culture war that they themselves may not even want to wage. A mood of alarm therefore prevails right into the Union, which means that the political opponent does not even have to speak up. The CDU and CSU do it all by themselves. In anticipatory obedience, so-called party friends speak up, not to explain the positions of the chairman, but to clarify what was not even questioned. When it comes to the “fire wall” that is conjured up, you don’t know whether it should be built for your own party chairman or for the AfD.
The CDU allowed itself to be driven into this situation for two reasons. Angela Merkel’s method of shimmering in red, green, and yellow so that you can no longer see the black background of the party worked surprisingly well for a long time, but has had its day and the party has been drained. There is a third successor for Merkel, but none for Merkel’s method. She became the midwife of the AfD, and every attempt to make the reason visible again and to restore a “right-wing CDU” ends in the accusation of giving in to right-wing populism.
The CDU is stealing topics again – but this time on the right
The second reason is a governing coalition that can brand and unsettle any opposition accordingly. If the CDU and CSU are verbally more robust, it is said to be the “language of the AfD” that speaks out of it. The SPD and the Greens are accommodating in that they are beating open doors in the media. It is astounding what is now known as the “culture war” in Germany: the heat pump, child poverty, spouse splitting, corporate tax, asylum law, skilled workers, nature conservation, the car, the speed limit or food. In fact, everything that fundamentally or even semi-clearly distinguishes the government and the opposition from one another.
But wasn’t that what Germany longed for after many years of grand coalitions under Merkel? Differentiability, clear edges and corners, alternatives – not to court the extremes, but to get rid of them again? In each case, however, it is the CDU that has to justify itself for every fundamental dispute. Because she is doing what was only done to the left under Merkel: theft of topics, but this time to the right, where she was once at home and was able to hammer in the stakes herself.
Hardly any support
The imbalance becomes even clearer when it comes to issues that belong to the socio-political figureheads of traffic light progress. If the CDU rejects the Self-Determination Act, it is not the brash nature of the family minister, who is failing even in her own coalition because of her ideological blinkers, but the Union, which is once again waging an allegedly illegitimate “culture war” and paving the way for a German Donald Trump. It will be similar in abortion law, although it is not the Union but the traffic light that is pulling it back into the ideological arena.
The Kulturkampf, which made the AfD strong, is and will remain about migration. Merz and his new general secretary quickly initiated a debate against which most of the CDU state princes and even Markus Söder warned. You didn’t want to touch the topic aggressively – for fear of the AfD. Now Merz has the salad: in the form of an even stronger AfD, which thrives on the fact that the Union swept a cardinal issue of political culture under the carpet for a year in the middle of a crisis.
Peter Carstens, Berlin Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 91 Ewald Hetrodt Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 5 A comment by Jochen Buchsteiner Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 25 Eckart Lohse and Markus Wehner Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 11
The same politicians who brought about this strategic emergency for the federal party are the politicians who do not understand that Merz is proclaiming the Greens the “main opponent in the traffic light” and who are now stabbing Merz in the back. This is a sign that the chairman has little support in the culture war within the party. He can ask Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer where this is going.
#Debate #CDU #firewall #AfD #Merz #Kulturkampf