The old chairman hands over to the new chairman: Merz takes over the federal chairmanship of the CDU from Laschet.
(Photo: Getty Images)
A dream of decades has come true for Friedrich Merz. After many struggles and disappointments, he is at the head of the CDU. Rarely has he been so touched.
This marks the end of the Merkel era for Christian Demo tickets. Your favorites and unfortunate heirs Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer and Armin Laschet go down in party history as short-term chairmen.
But if the party does not want to go the deprivation path of the SPD, which after Willy Brandt has worn out one chairman after the other, Friedrich Merz must now deliver. He is something like the last cartridge of the CDU.
The Sauerland positions the CDU differently than Merkel. While the chancellor was dominated by the social wing and liberal forces, Merz relies on economic competence and more conservative values. Even if he is no longer the godsend of the neoconservatives, as the political left in Germany caricatures him.
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The law graduate is a man from business for business. His compulsory political break took him to the highest levels of industry and especially the financial sector. All of this shapes him, but makes him credible with medium-sized companies and managers.
The FDP would certainly have wished for a different chairman. With the departure of Angela Merkel, the black and yellow option is back on the table. But Merz could appeal to liberal voters who have never believed in the traffic lights made up of SPD, Greens and FDP.
FDP leader Christian Lindner is still on course. But with the first regulatory error, Merz would be there immediately. It’s in his DNA. In other political fields, he still has to acquire the political flair. Here, too, he does not start from scratch. He will not declare issues such as same-sex marriage to be a battlefield. Little was heard from him in the dispute over the abolition of the advertising ban for abortions.
British model with shadow cabinet
The CDU is not the born opposition party. Merz knows that too. Ultimately he would have to use the British model and set up a shadow cabinet. A pure hit-and-run opposition like the CSU is currently doing is not appreciated by its own electorate.
Merz faces a strategic dilemma. If the CDU wants to become a people’s party again, i.e. if it wants to achieve more than 30 percent in the federal government, a conservative profile is not enough. The heavy partisan legacy of Merkel is the AfD. The Merz of the 90s could easily bring back three to four percentage points from this camp. But at the same time he would lose voters in the middle. However, power is always distributed over the center in Germany.
In his speech, Merz set accents in this direction and emphasized the social aspect. But it is important that he organizes unity in the Union. To do this, he must integrate the losers from the party conference, credibly bring the alliance with CSU leader Markus Söder to life and find a face-saving solution for Union faction leader Ralph Brinkhaus. If he succeeds, the CDU has a good chance of winning the state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia with a Merz effect.
The strength of the CDU was always to make the streams of modernization in broad bourgeois circles capable of reaching a consensus. The Adenauer CDU was empowered by the modernizer Helmut Kohl. After Kohl’s party leadership for 25 years, it was Angela Merkel who secured the chancellorship for the party and for herself. Friedrich Merz is now at the crossroads for the CDU.
More: Merz is the darling of the CDU base