After a dispute over how to deal with the AfD, the historian Rödder resigns as chairman of the CDU Basic Values Commission. The party leadership reacts cautiously. He will probably remain as a critic for the CDU.
The answer from the Konrad Adenauer House is brief. It can be confirmed that Andreas Rödder has resigned from the chairmanship of the Basic Values Commission. A quote from General Secretary Carsten Linnemann is included: “The party chairman and I respect Andreas Rödder’s decision.”
We would like to thank him for the work he has done and are pleased that he wants to continue to be involved in the party. The latter, i.e. that Rödder will play a role again under the chairmanship of Friedrich Merz, sounds quite implausible. Especially with a view to the letter that Rödder sent to Merz yesterday and that too ARD capital studio is present. The online magazine “Nius” first reported on it.
It reads like a reckoning with the CDU. To put it mildly, the relationship between Rödder and the party appears to have been permanently disturbed. Rödder feels forced, as he writes, to have to “decide between my intellectual freedom and the leadership of the Basic Values Commission.” That doesn’t shed a good light on the culture of debate in the CDU.
How to deal with the AfD?
Just a few days ago there was a heated discussion triggered by an interview with Rödder in “Stern”. However, Rödder was largely alone in his public opinion. It was about Thuringia and the question of whether the CDU could form a minority government there after the next election that would be tolerated by the AfD.
Rödder replied that in a minority government that has to constantly look for a majority, this is completely fine. It would only be problematic if the CDU allowed itself to be officially tolerated by the AfD.
The public outcry in the party, which is already sensitized by the vote in the Thuringian state parliament, was great. The tenor: The CDU should not make itself dependent on the AfD in any way. General Secretary Linnemann emphasized that Rödder did not speak for the party. Merz said: “That’s an absolute no go!” Rödder is now reacting by withdrawing, but the debate about how to deal with the AfD remains.
Thuringia CDU in a dilemma
In just under a year, Thuringians will be called upon to elect a new parliament. There is much to suggest that forming a coalition will be difficult or even impossible. Because the currently strongest parties are the AfD, the Left and the CDU. The CDU is not allowed to work with either the Left or the AfD, at least that is what it says in its incompatibility resolution. A stalemate that is already bothering many in the federal CDU, even if they don’t want to talk about it publicly.
For most people, the Thuringian Left under Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow, who is seen as pragmatic, is the lesser evil than the right-wing extremist Höcke AfD. However, there is also the danger that any kind of cooperation with the Left Party will cost the CDU more votes from the bourgeois camp.
During the vote on the real estate transfer tax in the Erfurt state parliament, the Thuringian CDU has already shown itself to be pragmatic in dealing with the AfD and pushed through a bill with votes from the AfD against the red-red-green minority government. The credo is: important concerns would remain right, even if the wrong people agreed. That sounds in part like Rödder, who imagines a minority government that does exactly that: acquire majorities.
He will remain with the party as a critic
Even if Rödder is no longer the head of the Basic Values Commission, which, according to reports from the Konrad Adenauer House, has already completed its work and will probably no longer hold a leading party position: the history professor could remain a kind of thorn in the side of the CDU.
As chairman of the conservative think tank R21, the history professor has recently repeatedly organized events on topics that are reluctant to be discussed openly within the CDU. In March, for example, one day was about “Germany after the Merkel era.” Rödder is considered a fierce critic of the ex-Chancellor and her supposed centrist course.
At the think tank’s last panel a week and a half ago, the Saxon state representation discussed: “Germany between Covid and climate – fundamental rights under reservation?”. Saxony’s Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer and Bundestag member Philipp Amthor were also there. Andreas Rödder will probably not go unheard in the future.