The K answer: Merz should stop playing games now

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung The K answer: Merz should stop playing games now Article by Jochen Buchsteiner • 3 hours • 5 minutes reading time The situation in the country is too serious for the government coalition to be able to afford constant bickering, Friedrich Merz likes to say. Doesn't that also apply to Germany's largest opposition force? There is no arguing there, at least not in public, but people are watching each other and are afraid of making important decisions. The CDU is keeping citizens in the dark about who will probably be the next chancellor, unnecessarily. Games undermine the CDU chairman's claim to be the head of government for serious times. And we must speak of games when the Bavarian Prime Minister and CSU leader still grins in response to teasing questions about his ambitions on talk shows and presents a race that has long been over as open. It is no less a game when the CDU leader accepts such things with gentle mockery, even though he knows that the voters deserve clarity. Calmness is only a political virtue if it is replaced by determination at the right moment. Not out of danger without danger What is Friedrich Merz waiting for? Keeping an agreement is honorable, but this agreement is vague. Sometimes it was said that the candidacy would be clarified after the elections in the east, sometimes it was said: in late summer. The elections in Saxony and Thuringia, which are important for the CDU, are over; in Brandenburg, the only thing that will be decided in federal politics, if at all, is the fate of the SPD chancellor. And "late summer" is now. On September 22nd, the day of the Brandenburg election, autumn begins according to the calendar. Merz could therefore confidently travel to Munich, bring back a conciliatory souvenir from the Sauerland and offer to announce the obvious decision to Söder as pater familias: that from the CSU's point of view, too, the candidate for chancellor must be Friedrich Merz. Would Söder really buck, like he did three years ago in the shoot-out with Amin Laschet? Then he would be pretty much alone. Söder has almost no support left in the CDU, and a lost fight for the candidacy could even end up jeopardizing his position in Bavaria. Of course, nothing that has to do with Söder is predictable, but further hesitation is also associated with risks for Merz. Machiavelli helps here: "No one has ever escaped danger without danger." Merz is not an ideal candidate; who is? Some citizens see him as habitually out of touch with the times and not very approachable. One could also say that he is "too conservative" for many. But that is certainly in line with the trend. Society has - as all elections and surveys of the past few months show - moved to the right, and what this expresses is not just the longing for a more restrictive migration policy, more pragmatic climate protection or an end to woke hyperliberalism. There is much to suggest that politicians' qualities that are generally attributed to bourgeois traditionalists are once again being valued: a sense of reality, reliability, a willingness to be uncomfortable; and a dose of steadfastness. Maneuvers with a sense of proportion The (only) argument of Merz's opponents - that they are more popular in polls than the party leader, and could therefore achieve a better election result for the Union - is thin. Neither Markus Söder in Munich nor Hendrik Wüst in Düsseldorf have had to (or been allowed to) prove themselves on the Berlin stage, where the challenges, demands and bandages are tougher. Here, people are more likely to stumble over their own erratic behavior than in a state capital, and opportunism is also more likely to be exposed. One should only compare what can be compared. Merz has still not been able to spark euphoria, but most in the Union have understood that they have not done badly with him. It is respectfully noted that the opposition leader - together with the general secretary he selected - has, in less than three years, transformed the programmatically depleted CDU back into a party that is once again perceived as a stubborn, conservative force. It speaks volumes that Merz managed to pull off this maneuver without exposing the CDU to accusations of "AfDeization" and without uprisings from Merkelians or personal opponents. Merz left behind certainties and empty words that had been accepted for years, if not decades, even in his own party, with astonishing silence: that more diversity per se benefits a society; that nothing can be done about migration and borders cannot be closed; that effective climate protection can only be achieved through personal deprivation and bans. The center of the realignment is asylum policy, which Merz tightened in tactical spurts.