parties
Merz sticks to it: “no cooperation” with the AfD
CDU leader Friedrich Merz considers cooperation with the AfD to be impossible. photo
© Bernd von Jutrczenka/dpa
The AfD is experiencing a high in the polls. The government and the Union disagree on the reasons for this – and CDU leader Merz once again clarifies one thing for his party.
Against the background of relatively high poll numbers for the AfD, CDU leader Friedrich Merz has once again clearly spoken out against working with the party. He said last night on ZDF’s “heute journal”: “As long as I am party leader of the CDU, there will be no cooperation with this party.” The AfD is xenophobic and anti-Semitic, said Merz.
In the ARD “Germany trend” the AfD had recently caught up with the SPD with 18 percent. The Insa survey published at the weekend for the “Bild am Sonntag” sees the party, which the constitutional protection classifies as a suspected right-wing extremist, at 19 percent, on a par with the SPD. The AfD has particularly good values in the east of the country. In surveys in Brandenburg, for example, it was 23 percent, in Saxony 26 percent and in Thuringia 28 percent. New state parliaments will be elected in the three federal states in the coming year.
Merz: “People are just tired of paternalism”
Merz said the cause of the AfD’s strength is predominantly the weakness of the traffic light government. “If we had a technically and politically well working government, then the AfD wouldn’t be at 18 percent.” Merz specifically named the Greens in the government. “People in Germany are just tired of this kind of paternalism. And now they’re venting it.”
On the other hand, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) pointed to other countries where right-wing populist parties have also become stronger at an event organized by “Zeit” in Hamburg on Saturday evening. He spoke of “parties in a bad mood” and also explained the development with uncertainties in a “time of upheaval” with many major problems at the same time. Scholz mentioned Corona, the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine and climate change.
AfD boss rejects Scholz’ designation
AfD chairwoman Alice Weidel rejected Scholz’s designation of her party as a “bad mood party”. “The citizens have actually lost their laughter,” said Weidel of the German Press Agency in Berlin. “But that’s not due to a supposedly bad-tempered AfD, but to an amateur theater group that delivers a sad political cabaret in the federal cabinet every day.”
When Scholz describes the AfD as a “bad mood party” that only appeals to frustrated diehards, it testifies to “complete unworldliness and aloofness,” said the co-party leader. In contrast to the traffic light government, the AfD has sustainable concepts in the areas of energy, social affairs and migration. “The voters, who don’t allow themselves to be unsettled by clumsy defamation of the only opposition force, see that too.”
Culture War Debate
CDU Vice Karin Prien told the “Welt” with regard to the values for the AfD and counter-strategies: “Of course, traffic light policy contributes to these survey values, but we as the CDU should not increase people’s anger.” A factual tone is important here. “The Union shouldn’t fight in secondary theaters either. Kulturkampf has never contributed to social cohesion.” Merz had written on Twitter on the subject of gender, among other things: “With every gendered news program, a few hundred more votes go to the AfD.”