“Maischberger”: Kretzschmer calls for a different way of dealing with the AfD

Not always, but always willingly, Michael Kretschmer lets the angry politician out of himself. For example, late Wednesday evening on ARD, in the show “Maischberger”. The Saxon Prime Minister, who is a deputy to Chairman Friedrich Merz in the federal CDU, scrunches up his face, gestures with his right hand and says: “If we pursue this policy the way we do it in the Federal Republic of Germany” – in dispute and with a we-already-know-how-it-works attitude – “then it will definitely go wrong!”

It’s about, what else, the current dispute between the government partners Union and SPD over compulsory military service. Later, when former Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz appears, the talk show will also be about Donald Trump and Russia. But above all, this evening is once again about a party that is now weighing heavily on the CDU: the AfD.

That’s why several former Union politicians say this in the current one star something loud that many active officials only dare to whisper: that the way we deal with the partly right-wing extremist party needs to be reconsidered.

Angela Merkel’s former CDU general secretary Peter Tauber explained that the CDU had to think about “a new policy of red lines” that would also allow it to “make decisions that the AfD agrees to.” With regard to the extreme right, the historian Andreas Rödder advocated a “conditioned willingness to talk”. And the former CSU Defense Minister Karl-Theodor von Guttenberg asked rhetorically: “Is the incompatibility decision between the AfD and the Left Party still in keeping with the times?”

Tauber’s statement in particular is causing a stir; the quote is shown during the broadcast. And presenter Sandra Maischberger asks her guest Kretschmer: “Is he right?”

The Prime Minister takes a deep breath. Now he has to go through it again. Taubert and Guttenberg are “very smart,” he replies. Because their sentences did not mean normalization of the AfD, as some headlines suggested. And this isn’t even in the text star. The AfD is not a normal party, but “a suspected right-wing extremist case, or here in Saxony, definitely right-wing extremist.”

First of all, that’s what Kretschmer always says, in line with the CDU federal leadership. But the head of government also knows that he will sit together with Merz and the CDU presidium in Berlin on Sunday to discuss the strategy against the AfD. Or rather: about a new strategy.

And so Kretschmer made it clear this Wednesday evening: The way the CDU has dealt with the AfD so far has only led to the party becoming larger and larger. The AfD, he says, has “never been forced to give reasons” to prove “whether its ideas are correct.” Because: “There is the firewall.”

This is followed by Kretschmer’s decisive sentence: “That’s why you have to find a different way of dealing with things.” We have to talk about “the reasons why people vote for this party, why they doubt democracy.”

Man, that’s of course the CDU.

Nevertheless, it would be wrong to conclude from these sentences that Kretschmer wants to actively work with the AfD in the future. He’s already experienced too much for that. Since Kretschmer lost his Görlitz CDU constituency to Tino Chrupalla in the 2017 federal election, he has been in a kind of melee against the AfD. He now only leads a CDU-SPD minority government in Dresden, which is supported in the state parliament by the Greens, the Left and, in some cases, the BSW. The AfD occupies almost a third of the seats in parliament and is blocking things wherever possible.

The Prime Minister is therefore doubly trapped in the incompatibility decision that a federal party conference of the CDU made against the AfD and the Left at the end of 2018. With “Maischberger” it becomes clear again how academic and even unrealistic Kretschmer considers the dogma to be. The AfD, he tirelessly emphasizes, is clearly right-wing extremist, so any cooperation or even coalition is impossible. And the Left? They are “worlds apart” from the CDU. But, and this brings him to Saxon practice: “If you work together on issues, what is the problem?”

One would have liked to know what Sebastian Kurz had to say about this Christian democratic dilemma, but unfortunately Sandra Maischberger later only asked him separately and exclusively about major world politics. But the former Chancellor of Austria is probably not necessarily the authority from which the CDU should seek advice; not even Jens Spahn, who was very close to Kurz.

As Chancellor, the Austrian was extremely flexible when it came to power. First he formed a coalition with the far-right FPÖ and later with the Greens, until he finally resigned due to various corruption allegations. He now works as a “global strategist” for the tech billionaire Peter Thiel, who, as we all know, doesn’t think much of democracy. But of course that doesn’t have to bother Sebastian Kurz.