Söder’s taunts: Pretty bad friends

One has to be almost grateful to Söder that he gives momentum to the election campaign with his taunts against Laschet. Regardless of the fact that the losing applicant is primarily concerned with his own future.

Saskia Esken recently tweeted: “The snooze button is the most beautiful of them all”. So much for the SPD leader, who apparently would rather sleep through the election campaign. Good night, SPD! Fatigue also plays a role in others: Armin Laschet – to paraphrase Markus Söder – chugged through the republic in a sleeping car for weeks. A nightmare for the Union and especially for him: the defeated candidate for the candidacy for chancellor – Markus Söder.

You have to be grateful to Söder that, with so much sleepiness far and wide, he always brings momentum into the election campaign with the taunts against his own candidate. Laschet has long since woken up, the flood disaster and corona pandemic are challenging him as a crisis manager. And he does it as best he can – travels a lot as Prime Minister in the affected areas. But as an election campaigner there was little or nothing at first, then bad pictures and the corresponding headlines followed.

Open criticism on all channels

The polls are now rushing, the Greens are getting closer to the Union and even the SPD is moving up. 68 percent of the citizens think: This is due to Armin Laschet. Markus Söder is one of these 68 percent – he doesn’t say that so clearly, but he does it clearly. He appears visibly annoyed in interviews, which was particularly noticeable after the last Prime Minister’s Conference. Söder declared the decisions to be too lax, pardon too slack. He spoke of “the one” or “the other” and always meant unmistakably him: his candidate for chancellor. Open criticism on all channels. And why?

Well, you really have to ask yourself that. It is indifferent and also credible that Söder is concerned with the matter. He is the strictest corona fighter in the country, even posing with a mask in front of the computer, as if the virus was being transmitted digitally. But with all the reminders, one thing always resonates in the matter: “I, Markus Söder, would do everything better, especially the entry, oh what: the triumphal procession to the Chancellery.”

Last chance for Berlin

All of this has the effect: nothing – at least nothing in the sense of the CDU and CSU. With his taunts, Söder supports neither Laschet nor the Union and one has to seriously ask oneself whether that is even his intention: to help the Union with the intimate enemy from the Rhineland to an election victory? Because then Laschet would be sitting in the Chancellery and could run again in four years with the official bonus. Söders Platz might then stay in Bavaria for longer or even forever. For an ambitious man in his fifties from a regional party, there won’t be too many chances of getting into the most important office in Berlin.

It is different if Laschet does not become Chancellor, but has to press the opposition bench with Friedrich Merz and Hans-Georg Maaßen. Then it would be clear: the Union needs another candidate for Chancellor for the next Bundestag election. Nobody who wants to convince the republic in a sleeping car, but someone who gets to their destination directly and without detours in the Transrapid from Munich main station … Edmund Stoiber would love it!