“One union, one team!” With these words, thunderously called into the hall, CSU chairman Markus Söder was welcomed at the CDU party conference in Hanover on Saturday. Forget the humiliations with which Horst Seehofer once left Angela Merkel standing, forget Söder’s meanness, which robbed Armin Laschet of his last nerve and perhaps also the chancellorship? Hardly, but on Saturday there will be a gossip march for the incoming CSU chairman.
The Union wants to look ahead. Merz didn’t have much to do with the dispute himself, Söder needs party peace to improve his future election prospects. Very modestly, Söder first greeted “the Union family” and ordered greetings from the “little sister”, which led to restrained scornful laughter in the exhibition hall. He knows, so Söder, “2021 was not our best year. A lot of mistakes have been made, including me.” Applause. “We learned from it!” said Söder and praised the good cooperation in the parliamentary group and between the chairmen – “is going excellently, better than we both expected, I may say, dear Friedrich”.
“Whenever you think it’s going uphill, someone comes and hits it with a hammer,” Söder then described the current situation. He used a word that Seehofer had once passed on to him. The traffic light is nervous, “a screaming chancellor” in parliament, that gives him food for thought. While Olaf Scholz used to look like a smurf, he now comes across as downright “gaga”. The Bavarian Prime Minister compared Robert Habeck, the Economics Minister and Vice-Chancellor, to a “whining poster boy”.
Gillamoos deposits in Hanover
Söder then criticized the government’s Ukraine policy as too hesitant, which surprised some delegates. Weapons and material would have to get there quickly. Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht (SPD) “delivered 5,000 helmets as the greatest deed. She’s probably been living on Sylt since then, I don’t know.” And Anton Hofreiter, the long-haired Green Party politician, he only believes in his support for Ukraine “if he gets a military haircut.”
After these first Gillamoos deposits, which earned him applause, Söder turned to inflation and widespread existential fears. He repeats, somewhat without instinct, attacks on the Green politician Annalena Baerbock, which go back to Russian propaganda machines. Attacks against the Greens always go well at CDU party conferences, the delegates enjoyed the appearance of the CSU chairman, relaxation after the concentrated, exhausting debates on women’s quotas and equality.
They are, Söder rants, “the same ancient ideological Greens”, represented by “Jürgen Trittin from his crypt”. Some apocalypse is also quite good, Söder stated: “These enormous explosions of prices are growing everywhere”. Those who are still earning a normal wage today can become low earners tomorrow. And Habeck, on the other hand, only speaks “with the sound of the totally clueless”, the middle class, the seniors, the commuters would lose out. He also doesn’t believe “that you can make a children’s birthday party a fundamental success with broccoli”.
Before the stage of the energy crisis, the traffic light coalition was also in the process of rebuilding society in the background, gendering, the “deeply anti-liberal idea” of the “Woke”, the “compulsive path to gendering”. He wanted more police officers on the street and no “thinking police in green rooms” and one could say historically, so Söder finally summed up after a lively half hour: “Left is always wrong.” Which had to be proven. And the CDU liked it, applause for the CSU chairman, “God protect Germany, God protect the CDU – and to be honest, the CSU too,” was how Söder ended and was cheered in Hanover, almost like an old friend.