Why Angela Merkel has unwittingly done her opponent Merz a great service

Merkur Why Angela Merkel has unwittingly done her opponent Merz a great service Georg Anastasiadis • 1 hour • 2 minutes reading time Merkur commentary Ten days before the election, the SPD has realized that its show of outrage is not having an impact on voters. Now there are signs of peace. A commentary by Georg Anastasiadis. The furor of outrage in the SPD after Merz's asylum tour de force was so great that some were already speculating that the comrades could simply refuse to join a grand coalition with the CDU and CSU after the election. SPD mood maker Ralf Stegner was particularly loud: he would never vote for Friedrich Merz as chancellor! Life experience shows that anyone who sits so high up in the tree has to climb back down again rather awkwardly. The SPD appears conciliatory before the federal election - Habeck with a ten-point plan Ten days before the election, the SPD is already sounding much more conciliatory than it did last time, when it led the candlelight vigils of the grandmas against the right. For example, the Minister of the Interior: Nancy Faeser suddenly thinks that the SPD and the Union are "not that far apart" on the issue of migration. Merz is right when he points to the failed Dublin system. That sounded very different a few days ago, when those to the left of center still had hopes of being able to demonstrate against the Union with mass gatherings. The Rambo Chancellor accused his presumed successor of an attack on Europe. Robert Habeck is also trying to make his green bride look better again for the CDU, which had just been reviled, with an action plan for more security and less irregular migration. But the "Green Youth" is spitting in his coalition soup. They accuse him of serving "right-wing narratives". The sentence (included in the original version) that immigration is to be "limited" is promptly missing from the edited ten-point plan. Apart from left-wing Green fundamentalists, this only pleases Markus Söder, who has no desire for a black-green coalition anyway. Friedrich Merz wants to become chancellor. Angela Merkel unwittingly played into his hands before the federal election. Merkel unwittingly helps Merz in the election campaign for the federal election Such maneuvers are unlikely to achieve much in the final stretch. Merz has decided to abandon Merkel's strategy of "asymmetric destabilization" that stuns voters in favor of a mobilization election campaign, and the former chancellor unwittingly helped him with her interference by making it clear to even the slow-witted that the Merz CDU is no longer the Merkel CDU, and is therefore electable again for conservatives. Most citizens have made their decision after the asylum drama. Because of the nail-biting nature of the three small parties, we will not know until February 23rd what majorities will result from this and whether Merz will start out as a strong chancellor or whether he has traded lemons and will become the head of a black-red-green traffic light coalition.