2024-09-20 06:37:13
The Union’s candidate for chancellor is Friedrich Merz and the person crowning him is Markus Söder. For some, this is an intra-party triumph. For others, it is more than a defeat.
A coronation does not just announce a name and assign it a title. It is always staged; it is a ritual, a spectacle. Its performance creates images, its script tells stories. There is always the story of the crowned one who takes on leadership and responsibility. There is the story of those who have him crowned. And there is usually the story of the one who not was crowned.
It is tragic for the uncrowned when he also plays the role of the crowning one. That was precisely Markus Söder’s role in the performance with which the Union has now awarded Friedrich Merz the candidacy for chancellor. Söder not only remained uncrowned. Is It was Friedrich Merz who had to crown him. Is had to take part in this coronation staging. The roles were clearly assigned. His was that of the loser. But it was much more than just a defeat for Söder. It was perhaps his last and final one.
Söder always had ambitions to become chancellor candidate
It is an open secret that Markus Söder has always strived for greater things. No matter how often he has emphasized in recent years that “his place is in Bavaria,” he has let it be known far more often in recent years – sometimes more clearly, sometimes less clearly – that he has ambitions in the direction of Berlin.
It was less than 14 days ago that he announced at the Gillamoos folk festival in Abensberg, Bavaria: “For me, being prime minister is the best office, but I would not shy away from taking responsibility for our country.”
Nobody says something like that for whom the candidacy for chancellor is not an issue. In fact, this sentence made Söder’s Berlin dream a topic of discussion in Germany again. Söder has too much of a mastery of the political rules to blurt out a sentence like that without thinking. The sentence was the last attempt to apply for the Union’s candidacy for chancellor, a last, almost desperate challenge from Munich to Friedrich Merz. Söder has once again positioned himself and invested a lot in it: slimmed down. Grown a daring beard. Launched a (refreshingly self-ironic) social media offensive.
Merz reacted quickly and consistently internally and closed ranks around himself. The otherwise complicated internal relationship between the often divided sister parties CDU and CSU is quite clearly structured when it comes to the question of the chancellor candidacy: The CDU leader has first right of access – but only if he has his troops behind him.
The uprising in the CDU did not materialise
Now Merz is by no means uncontroversial in his party. Söder must have secretly hoped for that. In the end, however, neither the powerful NRW Prime Minister Wüst, the eternal Merkelian Daniel Günter from Schleswig-Holstein nor the influential eastern state leaders Haseloff and Kretschmer were drawn into a joint rebellion against Friedrich Merz. But Söder needed him. Without him, Merz remained too strong, too unchallenged. The Union would rather kiss Merz the frog than swallow Söder the toad. He gambled. And lost.
And that was the staging with which the CDU directors staged the coronation of the Union’s candidate for chancellor, Friedrich Merz. Merz was allowed to remain silent, almost graciously, while Söder had to act as herald: “To put it briefly. The K question has been decided. Friedrich Merz is doing it!” Söder announced the decision in favor of Merz, the Union’s most important personnel decision in almost four years, just like you would rip a plaster off a child’s knee: in a flash.
His first assessment: “I’m fine with it.” Not: “We have appointed the best man” or “He is taking back the chancellorship for the Union!” But simply: “I’m fine with it.” Sometimes what you don’t say says more than a thousand words. Replacing the traffic light coalition and getting Germany back on track, Söder continued, is a priority. Everything must be subordinated to that. Subtext: Even his own goals and ambitions. They spoke “openly” with each other, Söder added.