So there he is, the real Markus Söder in front of the big Söder photo, and ultimately the question is: who did it, the beautiful Bavarian country? What is meant is not the blue sky over the garden of the CSU state leadership in Munich, even if some Christian Socialists sometimes talk as if the Bavarian landscape were the direct work of the party. But Söder means a successful Bayern balance sheet, “covered by facts and attitude to life” when he presented the large poster line for the coming election campaign weeks on Tuesday. “Our country in good hands” is a slogan. What is explained in another variant: “Life is simply better in Bavaria – it’s no coincidence.” Through good governance, explains the prime minister, in case the invited press didn’t understand it. Unlike the traffic light in Berlin, by the way, this digression should never be missing. However, the “Bayern sound” with which the CSU now wants to woo voters is for something, for Bavaria. Not against anything.
With this, Söder is clearly alluding to the AfD. Less than two months before the state elections, the CSU is actually in a comfortable position. It reaches 39 percent on average in the most recent surveys. Not grandiose in view of the former political omnipotence, but okay for many in the party – and even slightly more than the meager 37.2 percent of 2018. It is enough to continue governing with the free voters, a mood of change in favor of the Greens, for example, does not even begin to germinate . And yet one trend seems to worry Söder and his people: the upswing of the AfD, albeit not as strong as in the federal government. In a Forsa poll for the SZ, the AfD recently had 13 percent. In the CSU, too, there is a risk that frustration with the federal government could lead to radical memoranda. So take countermeasures. And that’s why another one looks at the posters on Tuesday: Franz Josef Strauss. With the quote: “We don’t want to have anything to do with far-right fools and extremists.”
In fact, the CSU is moving extensively into the 2023 election campaign with “Altvater” (O-Ton Söder), who died in 1988. Also because others tried to “collect” Strauss for themselves. The free voters did that recently, after the debate about the Erdinger demo speech by Economics Minister Hubert Aiwanger, FW parliamentary group leader Florian Streibl teased: Aiwanger was a “gifted beer tent speaker, the only one who could do it before him was Franz Josef Strauss”. . This thesis was accepted as sacrilegious in the CSU. Nevertheless, the current mission for Strauss is about the AfD. This had already been advertised in previous election campaigns with the slogan “Strauß would vote for the AfD”. This time, the CSU prefers to send the hero into the race itself. “Anyone who votes for radicals weakens Bavaria and democracy,” warns Söder. This party wants the EU to die, wants to leave NATO, even including Germany as the “Putin Protectorate”.