opinion
The CDU is working on SPD chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz. Not a day goes by without being asked to renounce a red-red-green coalition. The Union politicians know exactly why Scholz will do a devil.
So now the Chancellor too. At a press conference in Berlin, she demonstratively kept her distance from her Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz. “If you refer to me, so to speak, (there is) a difference. With me as Chancellor, there would never be a coalition in which the left is involved.” There is “a huge difference for the future of Germany between him and me,” said Merkel.
If you believe the urgent warnings from Markus Söder, Armin Laschet and now Angela Merkel, a ghost is haunting Germany. The specter of a red-red-green coalition after the federal elections on September 26th. Almost every hour, the top SPD candidate Olaf Scholz is asked to categorically rule out joining forces with the left. But he just grins his “smurfy” grin (Markus Söder) and persistently refuses to utter the “three words” (Armin Laschet) “I won’t do it”.
Red socks campaign the last cartridge of the CDU
The whole debate is of course only a mock battle. The last cartridge from the CDU. Because since 1994 there has been a fashion trend in the Union that flares up again and again during election campaign times when things get tight: the red socks are dug out.
The slogan was invented by the now deceased CDU General Secretary Peter Hintze. “Off to the future … but not in red socks” he had posters in the 1994 federal election campaign. And thus assumed that the SPD was also planning to work with the PDS at the federal level, as it did in Saxony-Anhalt, where the SPD man Reinhold Höppner had forged a red-green minority government that was tolerated by the SED’s successor party, the PDS.
The fact that the Union will again wear legwear in the 2021 election campaign documents its sloppy campaign planning. In truth, no one had expected Scholz as an opponent, the main rivals seemed to be the Greens around Annalena Baerbock. Instead, the Union strategists have to watch helplessly as Olaf Scholz undisguisedly presents himself as the heir to the incumbent Chancellor, on the cover of the SZ magazine, where Peer Steinbrück once showed the voters the finger, loyally forms the Merkel diamond. That can get on your nerves.
And so one is now trying to portray the SPD candidate as a “vehicle” for mysterious left party forces like Saskia Esken and Kevin Kühnert, who can only escape his final damnation by renouncing a red-red-green coalition. Political professionals like CDU General Secretary Paul Ziemiak know all too well that Scholz will not rule anything out four weeks before the federal election, where polls suggest that five coalitions are possible, because he would be giving away a strategic bargaining chip. In any coalition negotiations he could put the possible partners CDU and FDP under pressure at any time, according to the motto: “If you don’t make any concessions, I’ll just do it with the left.”
The second reason for Scholz’s persistent refusal to renounce the red-red ghost is a party congress resolution of the SPD in 2013. At that time, when there was general grumbling about joining a grand coalition, the party and its leadership committed themselves to the In principle, no coalition should be ruled out in the future – with the exception of right-wing populist or extreme parties. Scholz can’t go behind this line, he really doesn’t have that much legroom.
Party day decision narrows Scholz ‘leg freedom
But for another reason, the CDU attack is nothing more than a hypocritical staging. Because just as the SPD can be attacked on its left flank, the Union looks bleak in some corners on the right edge. Admitted: A coalition with the Gauland-Höcke-Weidel-AfD, even the imagination of left leader Janine Wissler is probably not enough. But just remember the scandalous election of FDP man Thomas Kemmerich in Thuringia in March 2020. At that time, the state CDU engaged in an unworthy tactical skirmish with the right-wing extremists in order to prevent the left Bodo Ramelow as prime minister. A fall from grace that had to be reversed with a Merkel power word and cost the party leader at the time, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the chairmanship. In Saxony-Anhalt, too, party leader Rainer Haseloff recently had to muster all his authority and kick his Interior Minister Holger Stahlknecht out of the cabinet, because in an interview he showed his willingness to allow the AfD to tolerate a possible CDU minority government.
Again in Thuringia, in electoral district 196 (Suhl, Schmalkalden-Meiningen, Hildburghausen, Sonneberg), the CDU is just allowing the former President of the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maassen, to fight for a Bundestag mandate. That Maaßen who never made a secret of his sympathy for ideas hard on the right-wing extremist border. In any case, the Union never had a problem with tolerating ultra-national MPs such as the long-time chairman of the Association of Expellees, Erika Steinbach, in its ranks.
Bigot, hypocritical and also fallen out of time, this is how the red sock campaign looks these days. Because, in fact, and the strategists from the Laschet camp also know this, the fundamental beliefs of the past are now a thing of the past, and the boundaries between the camps have long since become porous. Society has become much more differentiated, said the former CDU / CSU candidate for Chancellor Edmund Stoiber in the SZ recently and admitted: “We could no longer conduct such an election campaign with ‘freedom or socialism’ today.”
It seems as if the message has not really reached Armin Laschet and Co. yet.
David William is a talented author who has made a name for himself in the world of writing. He is a professional author who writes on a wide range of topics, from general interest to opinion news. David is currently working as a writer at 24 hours worlds where he brings his unique perspective and in-depth research to his articles, making them both informative and engaging.
