When the CDU’s most important representatives meet on Monday morning in Berlin for its committee meetings, the party’s poor performance in the Hamburg election will only be one of several unpleasant topics.
The journalists in front of the entrance to the Konrad-Adenauer-Haus will probably ask the arriving people about much bigger problems.
Not only that the Hamburg result for the CDU is the worst in almost 70 years – and thus another damper for the lurching party. The party-internal dispute over dealing with the AfD and the Left Party contributed to the sagging of the CDU in the Hanseatic city. After the agreement with the elected Thuringian Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow, the situation got worse at the weekend.
Thuringia was “anything but a tailwind”
Confused, General Secretary Paul Ziemiak admitted on Sunday evening that what happened in Thuringia was “anything but a tailwind” for the campaigners in Hamburg. High-ranking officials in the CDU also complain about the “image of lack of leadership” that the party gives. What the CDU boss Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer has to say this Monday about the procedure for choosing her successor is eagerly awaited.
Last week, former Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen announced himself as a candidate for the chair and asked for a member survey and a decision by May.
Kramp-Karrenbauer’s idea of negotiating a “team solution” with NRW Prime Minister Armin Laschet, Health Minister Jens Spahn and their old competitor Friedrich Merz and thus integrating all candidates seemed to be a waste. Röttgen made it clear that he does not want to participate in processes that are organized in the back room without publicity.
The Konrad-Adenauer-Haus now says that Kramp-Karrenbauer wants to present a kind of timetable on Monday. It could amount to a special party convention in May or June. CSU chief Markus Söder, however, had warned to separate the election of the party leader from the appointment of the candidate for chancellor. Because the CSU also wants to have a say.
Until the weekend, Kramp-Karrenbauer was in discussion with everyone involved, the CDU boss made a lot of calls. On Sunday evening she ate dinner in the Konrad-Adenauer-Haus with members of the CDU presidium.
Party without leadership
But the situation remains uncertain: Kramp-Karrenbauer rejects the membership survey requested by Röttgen. She also wants to avoid a candidate for a fight. A cabinet reshuffle could offer more scope for a team solution, but Chancellor Merkel would have to agree. And not even all those interested have officially declared their candidacy.
To put it bluntly, the situation of the CDU on Monday is as follows: A party without leadership is digging deeper and deeper into a directional dispute in which there could ultimately be no winners, only losers. Does the party want to permanently reject any “form of cooperation” with the left – and put it on par with the AfD?
Shrill pitch from Ziemiak, Spahn and Merz
The demarcation from the Left Party has been creating identity for the heirs of Helmut Kohl for decades – at least in the west of the republic. The shrill tone with which General Secretary Ziemiak, Spahn and Merz are now warning their Thuringian party friends against cooperating with Ramelow shows that they see the party’s DNA under attack. But with the less pragmatic attitude they take away the maneuverability of the state CDU.
After the CDU had missed the chance, as suggested by Ramelow, to elect the former Christian Democratic head of government Christine Lieberknecht as interim prime minister, a solution to the conflict in Thuringia finally seemed in sight at the weekend.
CDU continues to debate about the Left Party
But the top of the CDU government promptly gripped in between. Secretary General Ziemiak sees a violation of the decision of the federal CDU of 2018, according to which there should be no cooperation with the AfD or the Left Party. He called for quick new elections in Thuringia. Former Union faction leader Merz tweeted that the decision of the Thuringian CDU to vote for Ramelow temporarily “damages the credibility of the CDU throughout Germany”.
Since there are no simple solutions to the dispute over the so-called horseshoe theory – message: the extremes are close together – the CDU could now get caught up in a self-damaging debate in a similar way to that the SPD did on the subject of “Hartz IV” ,
For a decade and a half the Social Democrats and their critics kept calling the topos until last year a new welfare state concept with the promise of overcoming “Hartz IV” ensured a certain level of peace.
Even optimists in the Konrad-Adenauer-Haus should not hope that a structurally similar CDU debate on the subject of equidistance to the AfD and Left Party could leave the brand core undamaged for years.
The Christian Democrats would have every reason to take a closer look at the Hamburg result – and to draw conclusions from it.
Tschentscher did not want SPD leaders to be there
In the city-state, voters trusted Mayor Peter Tschentscher (SPD) to have all the skills that Christian Democrats usually claim to have. Its liberal-social democratic party sees itself as a partner and promoter of a strong economy and guarantees security through increased personnel in the police force and hard work against rule breakers.
Tschentscher also expanded this portfolio in the direction of green by promising a sophisticated, exemplary climate policy in his city-state.
Tschentscher’s policies stand out clearly from the federal SPD, which has moved even further to the left in the membership decision with the election of Saskia Esken and Norbert Walter-Borjans as party chairmen. Therefore, the SPD cannot credibly defend the position of the strongest party by the comrades in Hamburg as a success of its own.
Tschentscher and his state party had drawn a kind of “cordon sanitaire” to the new leadership duo and, consequently, neither let them appear in their election campaign.
They could also learn a lot from Hamburg in the Willy-Brandt-Haus
In many ways, the politics of the SPD in Hamburg seemed miles away from the messages from the Willy-Brandt-Haus. While Esken promises the implementation of democratic socialism, Tschentscher preferred to talk about the fact that as mayor he created more jobs in city cleaning. Action orientation and suitability for reality in the implementation of visions are the political guiding principles for Hamburg, while in Willy-Brandt-Haus political visions without action orientation often seem to be the goal.
The likelihood that the Federal Party could take Hamburg’s success as an opportunity to rethink its own course is rather low. Because Esken and Norbert Walter-Borjans also attributed the victory to the “clear course” of their left-wing federal SPD.
People trust the incumbents
Ultimately, the effect in Hamburg was similar to that of the elections in Thuringia, Brandenburg and Saxony: people trusted the incumbents, they were betting on stability. An effect from which the CDU also benefited at federal level for years – and which is now being lost.
Not only that the current incumbent will not run for the next election. The CDU is currently not a place of stability, but is caught up in a whirlpool of unresolved questions of power and chaotic course debates as the SPD has done up to now. That should act as a deterrent even to die-hard CDU voters.