CDU and Linke: This debate could tear the fire wall for the AfD

Again it didn’t work out on the first attempt. But last Tuesday, May 6th, 4.15pm, Friedrich Merz had finally reached the goal of his dreams: Chancellor. Wait a little, tremble, yes, but who will still think about it in a few months? If he doesn’t deceive himself there.

The processes of the choice have disclosed a CDU’s target breaking point. “I am very, very grateful to the left that they made it possible,” says Union faction leader Jens Spahn in the ARD, five days after the chancellor election. I’m sorry, what? The words “grateful” and “left” in one sentence?

The reason: Only with the help of the Left Party – after hours of negotiations – the second ballot was carried out that Tuesday. The left had to agree to a change in the regulations to prevent a hanging game. Only with them and the Greens does the black and red coalition come to a two-thirds majority.

A majority that shouldn’t actually exist, some in the CDU see it. And so since then, a debate has been raging over the consultation with the left, which can become a sample for the party. A debt brake reform should be at the end of the year. For this, too, it would need it with the help of the far left. Is that possible?

Spahn emphasizes in the ARD that the left must rethink its positions for every further cooperation with the CDU. The CDU’s incompatibility decision to you continues to apply – just like the AfD. In 2018, a party congress decided: “The CDU in Germany rejects coalitions and similar forms of cooperation with both the Left Party and the alternative for Germany.”

But is this equation up to date? And above all: is it still practical?

The deputy CDU chairman Karin Prien is also at the top of those who represent an opening. The new super minister for family and education finds that the incompatibility decision should not mean equation of the AfD and Left Party. Both parties are “in the fundamental contrast” to the Union, says Prien,, But they differed just as fundamentally.

“The AfD is the party of right -wing extremism, it is a danger to our liberal democracy”, that is not the left. The Union must therefore have “pragmatically weighing up” and “the stability of the democratic institutions”, as Prien says: “Our time demands more ambiguity tolerance and less dogmatism from all democratic forces in Germany.” Prien’s previous boss, Daniel Günther, CDU Prime Minister in Kiel, speaks for a long time.

Even Merz ‘closest confidante Thorsten Frei opened the door for a gap in the morning after the chancellor’s election. One said, he said, with a view to the left, “re -evaluate one or the other question”. The next day, however, he quickly relativized the statement: nobody intended to change the incompatibility decision.

Rowing Freis back shows how toxic every word seems in this debate.

The question of how the Union keeps it with the left is as old as reunification. But since left and AfD have more than a third of the votes in the Bundestag, it has been more pressing than ever. And leads the Union deep into a triple dilemma.

Historically, an opening compared to the former SED stirred at the anti -communist core of the CDU and CSU. It is likely to spoil parts of the conservative clientele. Idologically, according to the party leadership, it could trigger a dangerous automatism: Whenever cooperation with the left is carefully debated, the requirement follows from the right to normalize how to deal with the AfD. Especially in the east.

It has long been clear how dangerous the 2018 decision can be. Just a year later, no government could be formed in Thuringia without the participation of the left and AfD. The incompatibility decision only led to a government crisis in the Free State, the election of a FDP Prime Minister with the help of the AfD-and finally to the withdrawal of CDU leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer in Berlin. Could party leader Merz also stumble across this question?

When Merz fell through the Bundestag last week, Mario Voigt sat on the Federal Council Bank and felt reminded of Thuringia. “I think that what we have learned in Erfurt has now also arrived in Berlin,” said the Prime Minister. “In the event of difficult majority relationships, it is important to weigh up and act pragmatically.” This also includes the need to differentiate. For Voigt, this means that this means: “With a party that does not work on a system fall like the AfD, the CDU can make parliamentary agreements from state policy responsibility beyond all fundamental differences.”

Many in the party see the fundamentally different. “With the Left Party, there must be no normal cooperation,” says Christoph Ploß, head of the Hamburg Landes group in the Union Group. For him, the left is a “renamed wall and shooting command party”. Votes on parliamentary processes such as the chancellor’s election are the maximum.

“The Left Party should not make its socialist ideology a negotiating or voting partner on political questions,” warns Ploß. This is how many think in the Union. So far also party leader Merz. Although it seems ironic that Merz had twice made sure that the old trap snapped. It was he who politically resuscitated the left by his asylum vote with the AfD in the middle of the election campaign. And it was also he who was dependent on her help – and thus gave the left real influence.

This new self -confidence was noticeable at the party congress of the left. Last Friday, the exhibition hall of Chemnitz. In the front row, party leader Ines Schwerdtner, who was there in the Bundestag in the decisive discussion, was involved when negotiating the second ballot. “We have achieved that the CDU and CSU had to give us up for the first time and then thank us publicly,” she says. “Now we expect that you will not only come to us when the hut burns again.”

Later, however, the left at the party congress weakened its definition of anti -Semitism, which should make further approaches difficult. Family Minister Prien, whose grandfathers were Jews, calls this decision “completely incomprehensible”, a “anti-Semitism scandal”.

CDU general Carsten Linnemann says: “The unspeakable trivialization of anti-Semitism at the party congress has already removed the left even more extreme from the CDU than anyway.” His attitude is clear: “For me there can be no political cooperation with the Left Party as long as extremist groups participate there.”

Does this sentence of the Secretary General can withstand parliamentary practice, reality? Soon three federal constitutional judges with a two -thirds majority will have to be elected. In addition, the Union and the SPD agreed to reform the debt brake this year. Even if some CDulers hope that the Commission may days: At some point it is voted – with the left.

Linnemann therefore tries it by power as a precaution: “The incompatibility decision is a good thing as it is.” The dispute is likely to run until the next year, up to a possible showdown at the CDU party conference in January or February. Only this committee could weaken the decision – and trigger a self -destructive debate to the AfD fire wall.

Maybe Friedrich Merz will have to think this Tuesday in May more often than he could love.