FDP in the election campaign: Not just Lindner

The FDP relies entirely on party leader Lindner for its election posters. In the election campaign, however, the focus should be on the content. Just don’t get cocky, is the motto. There are reasons.

The polls of the past few weeks saw the FDP in stable double digits – in the meantime it was even on a par with the SPD. Some liberals are already boldly calling for top candidate Christian Lindner to be invited to the three chancellor candidates’ rounds of discussions that have been planned as “Triell”. “Christian Lindner currently has the same chances of becoming Federal Chancellor as Olaf Scholz,” said Deputy Party Chairman Wolfgang Kubicki at the beginning of June.

Lindner himself is more cautious: Confident, but just not be cocky, is the motto of the party leader. Because even if the FDP is currently considered a possible governing party after the federal election in many simulation games, several traumas weigh on the party: After the strong election result of 2009 (with 14.6 percent) and the black-yellow coalition of Angela Merkel and Guido Westerwelle kicked the party out of the Bundestag in 2013 with 4.8 percent. In 2017, Lindner disappointed many voters when, after re-entering the Bundestag (with 10.7 percent), he broke negotiations for a Jamaica coalition. It was better not to rule than to rule wrongly, he said at the time. But many FDP friends, especially those from the business camp, felt that this was an escape from responsibility.

To take responsibility

Lindner therefore emphasized the words “taking responsibility” several times during the presentation of his party’s election campaign concept in Berlin. Also that the FDP has demonstrated “state political responsibility” in its corona policy – admittedly with more sensitivity to civil rights than the other parties. With criticism of the political opponent – “competitor”, as Lindner says – the FDP chairman holds back. One wants to put content in the foreground, he emphasizes and is almost statesmanlike.

The focus is on liberal economic issues

It is noticeable that the FDP is campaigning primarily with “Lindner issues”. He wants “away from ever increasing demands, sometimes overburdening the state, back to people’s personal responsibility, respect for performance and property, ingenuity in the social market economy, and back to the central value of freedom for us.”

Classic, economically liberal topics are therefore the focus at Lindner. In interviews he talks about tax breaks, calls for less bureaucracy and warns of further indebtedness. The opening up to socio-political issues and climate protection evoked at the FDP party congress in May is evidently taking a back seat.

Clear edge – especially towards the Union parties, which for Lindner are both: favorite partner (as in his home country North Rhine-Westphalia) and opponent at the same time. Because the FDP fears that it could be enough for black and green – “liquorice and spinach” as Lindner says. That is why he wants to attract Union voters, pointing out that Armin Laschet will be the next Federal Chancellor “with a probability bordering on certainty” anyway.

FDP as a fear for investors

Just a few days ago, Lindner asked Union Chancellor candidate Laschet in the Bundestag whether he stood for a “Mediterranean fiscal policy in Europe” or whether a Germany under Laschet’s leadership would “again be an advocate of stability and a market economy in Europe” Lindner even criticized himself from international asset managers such as Blackrock or State Street: Not only do they not surprisingly consider participation by the left in government to be a risk for the markets, but also – and this is very surprising – participation by the FDP in government, because the FDP is a limitation the debts and for more individual responsibility of the states in Europe. Lindner, who does not hide his ambitions for the office of finance minister, takes it calmly: Such an investor warning is for him “a compliment”.

Focus on Lindner

And something else stands out during the presentation of the FDP election campaign: the focus of the posters is only top candidate Lindner. “Of course Christian Lindner”, as General Secretary Volker Wissing says. The high level of awareness of Lindner – meanwhile the longest-serving chairman of the parties represented in the Bundestag – is to be used to the full. Possibly so that the FDP top candidate does not fall apart from the three official candidates for chancellor from the Union, the Greens and the SPD in the public eye.