UTwo insightful interviews were published at the turn of the year. Immediately before New Year's Eve, CDU chairman Friedrich Merz discussed his age. If he runs for chancellor and wins, he would be 70 years old when he takes office.
Merz did not take the fact that the two men who will probably fight for the presidency of the United States in the fall are significantly older as a welcome argument to put his own age into perspective. Rather, it is “a warning note” that it is not a given to hold such a position at this age, the CDU leader told the German Press Agency.
It got even worse. Carsten Linnemann, general secretary of the CDU, Merz confidant and not known as a founding member of the Angela Merkel fan club, expressed his wish to have the former Chancellor in the 2025 federal election campaign. In an interview with “Stern” Linnemann said: “Under her the country was governed well.” It was important not to break with the past. At least Linnemann added that mistakes were made during the Merkel era from which we should learn.
Is the CDU leadership currently making itself small? Doesn't Merz want to become a candidate for chancellor? On the contrary. Rather, sensitive issues that could hinder him in the election campaign should be cleared up. The CDU leader, who knows America well, can easily see that it is his 81 years that stand in the way of Joe Biden's effort to extend his stay in the White House.
Merz is significantly younger and more agile than Biden. And Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who a candidate Merz would probably have to deal with next year, is not even three years younger. But even if it were difficult for the SPD campaigners to aggressively address the age of the CDU candidate, it would stand in Merz's way. Nothing is as easy to attach to him as the image of the old, white man, and a wealthy one at that – keyword private plane.
Not one, but two
The question quickly arises as to whether the Union doesn't have a younger challenger. Merz doesn't like the answer because it is: not one, but two. The CSU chairman Markus Söder is more than eleven years younger than Merz, Hendrik Wüst, the North Rhine-Westphalia CDU state chairman and prime minister, is almost twenty.
Söder's statements in favor of Merz's candidacy apply until he says the opposite because he considers himself to be the more promising candidate. Everyone has known this since the 2021 Union election campaign. Merz has been feeling Wüst's hot breath for a long time. Whenever a fairly prominent CDU politician says that Merz is the right candidate for chancellor, you can count down from ten. At eight o'clock at the latest, Wüst points out that the state chairmen have a say.
As much as many CDU members and voters are pleased that Merz is giving the CDU sharper contours again, especially in migration policy, party strategists know that the path to the chancellorship must be largely paved with Merkel votes. Merz needs those who have voted for the CDU or CSU four times since 2005 only or primarily because of Angela Merkel. This will be even more difficult than the age thing.
Cuddles for Merkel
When Merz was struggling with the question of how he could avoid congratulating his arch-rival Merkel on the medal with which Social Democratic Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier had awarded her, Wüst was already preparing to honor Merkel with the North Rhine-Westphalia State Prize, Söder those with the Order of Merit of the State of Bavaria. Hence Linnemann's caresses for Merkel.
Scholz doesn't have much to laugh about right now. The poll numbers for him, for the SPD and also for the three traffic light parties combined are so lousy that the social democratic decade that was so grandly announced is now in danger of becoming something more for the fairy tales than for the history books. While the Union had even recognized the Chancellor's reaction to Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine in the first traffic light year, the coalition has since become so ready for action through the fighting in its own ranks that the CDU is preparing for the election campaign, especially for the In the event that elections will take place before autumn 2025.
It is not yet clear whether Merz will be able to decide the K question quickly and reasonably calmly. If 2021 fails to establish internal peace in the Union, that could be the decisive joker in Scholz's bad hand. Again.
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