Friedrich Merz’ statements on the AfD cause a stir. The communication problem is a risk for the Union, comments Merkur editor Christian Deutschländer.
The Union has its big summer theater there. It’s an artificial and stupid one. The huge fuss about the allegedly torn firewall to the AfD is fed by two factors: the media, other parties and some party enemies are very keen to put Friedrich Merz’s words in his mouth. And in the case of the CDU boss himself, the cases in which he expresses himself imprecisely and sometimes exaggerated – as if he, the edgy man from the 90s, hadn’t arrived in today’s brutally fast media world, in which every sentence has to be right. A chairman with a communication problem is a big risk for the CDU and the campaigning CSU.
The Union will have to find answers – all other parties too
The fact is: the CDU has a stable firewall against the AfD, no joint elections, resolutions and initiatives, no bargaining at any level. Good thing, because an extremist party must not be normalized. That is the decision, that is also Merz’ attitude. In his TV interview, he did not speak out for municipal coalitions with right-wing extremists. But politicians have to think about one thing in 2023: How to deal with a municipality in which the district administrator and the mayor come from the AfD. Unfortunately, this has become reality in the East.
What to do on site – reject and block everything? Paralyze a place as long as there is still somehow an all-party majority against the AfD in committees? Differentiate between factual and polemical, right and wrong approaches in municipal, less professional councils, in which decisions are made about the recycling center and the school gymnasium?
The Union will have to find answers to this. All other parties who are now happily insulting Merz, too, by the way.
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