Union before explorations: Laschet’s last chance

A failed candidate, an insecure Union and the risk that old power struggles will break out again: things will be tight for CDU leader Laschet. About a tragedy with an uncertain outcome.

What is currently happening in the Union is for many in political Berlin the last act of a tragedy in the classic sense: The tragic hero Armin Laschet got the worst election result for the Union and lost the Bundestag election. Instead of admitting defeat and allowing his party to restart, Laschet still hopes to leave the field as the winner.

The longer he believes in becoming Chancellor of a coalition with the Greens and the FDP, the further he seems to be dragging his party, the CDU, into the abyss. Many in the Union parliamentary group no longer believe in a Jamaica coalition with the Greens and the FDP, but at the same time fear agonizing years in the opposition – together with the AfD and the left.

What if Lindner’s young, dynamic-looking FDP brilliantly represents the middle class in a traffic light coalition? The CDU could disappear into insignificance in the medium and long term. Ironically, the CDU – the party of Adenauer, Kohl and Merkel.

Little understood by the boys

She is hardly understood by the younger electorate anyway and in the east of the country there is always a problem of demarcation from the radical right-wing AfD. Not only Laschet, the entire Union is in a dilemma: If the CDU were to saw off its party chairman before the talks with the FDP and the Greens and replace it with Jens Spahn, Norbert Röttgen or Friedrich Merz, it would be perceived by its own electorate as a self-tattering.

After many phone calls from leading Union politicians in the background, Laschet now gets one last chance: He is allowed to lead the internal preliminary talks on Sunday afternoon as well as the talks with the FDP on Sunday evening and with the Greens on Tuesday for the CDU. In tragedy this would be a “retarding moment”, that is, the moment in tragedy when the protagonist can still draw hope – before the final fall.

Laschet’s career at the end?

If Laschet is denied success in these negotiations, his political career should be over. After all, it is “difficult to imagine” that Laschet, as leader of the opposition in the Bundestag, could embody a change in the Union in terms of personnel and content, according to political scientist Sabine Kropp from the Free University of Berlin.

The now simmering discussion about a possible change in the top staff would “damage the confidence of the voters”, however, annoyed Roderich Kiesewetter, who defended Laschet against all hostility in the election campaign and still got the most votes for the CDU in Baden-Württemberg . “Armin Laschet was our top candidate and is the first negotiator for Jamaica. For Jamaica, Armin Laschet needs the balancing, integrative strength of Armin Laschet. I also see no basis for a negotiator other than Armin Laschet on the part of the FDP and the Greens.”

Jamaica far away

However, it seems unlikely that the preliminary talks for a possible Jamaica coalition could be successful in the coming days. The Saxon Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer has long given up hope.

And from the Greens and the FDP it is quite unabashedly said behind closed doors: The Union is not at all negotiable in this state. Apparently, the two smaller “citrus” parties are primarily concerned with a threat to the SPD – that is, in the worst case, to be able to threaten the Social Democrats with the option of Jamaica if Olaf Scholz appears too brash at the traffic light negotiations.

It is true that some liberals and even some Greens have the vague idea that they could implement more solid financial policy and more climate protection with the Union than with the Scholz-SPD. But it is also clear to the supporters of Jamaica: Laschet is too attached to the image of the loser. In any case, Laschet’s values ​​continued to sink into the cellar after the election, adds Professor Kropp. He would be a chancellor who was not wanted. And even in the case of successful exploratory talks, Laschet would have to be elected Chancellor by the parliamentary group of the Greens in the Bundestag. At the moment – hardly imaginable.

The frustration runs deep

How contrite Laschet himself may be is difficult to judge from the outside. The fact that he was not only objectively criticized for mistakes in the election campaign, but also mocked for mishaps, may have hurt him personally. In addition, he must have felt the frustration of his party in various committee meetings after the disastrous election result. Many observers ask themselves all the more: Why doesn’t a well-known CDU politician tell him to stop?

Well, the Greek tragedy has the figure of the antagonist ready for this, meaning that of the adversary. In this role, CSU boss Markus Söder, the supposed “candidate of the heart”, has been triumphing for months. At a press conference in the middle of the week, Söder could hardly have distanced himself more clearly from Laschet. For some it may simply be the cold-bloodedness in a brutal fratricidal struggle. For others, however, it is a kind of heroism. Nobody in the CDU dares to force Laschet to give up. So who is the “regicide” supposed to be if not the antagonist?

Temporary preparations after Laschet

Meanwhile, the Union is preparing for a post-Laschet period. It could begin as early as Tuesday evening, if it turns out that – at least under the leadership of Laschet – there will not be a Jamaica coalition. The CDU will presumably set up a special party congress and elect a new party leader.

For Rita Süßmuth, former President of the Bundestag and grande dame of the Union, the crucial question is whether the Union draws the right lessons from the election result. It wasn’t so important now to look for someone to blame. Rather, it is important to reflect on what the Union stands for, i.e. on fundamental values ​​of the party, the challenges of the future and unity. There is a lot to do there. In the election campaign, the crucial questions were not answered by any party, such as how the fight against climate change should be financed.

So instead of falling back into old power struggles, Süssmuth calls for a team that develops clever ideas and finds answers to the pressing questions of the time.

Looking for credible staff

In a precarious situation, personnel changes can be made the quickest, say other veteran Union politicians in background discussions. Characters who credibly argue for big issues like the fight against climate change, ideally of the caliber of Klaus Töpfer. But which characters could that be?

Political scientist Kropp says that even with the former core competencies of economics and internal security, the Union has lost the attribution of competencies. A new person or team at the top should be able to credibly represent these competencies. It seems hard to imagine at the moment that the Union will be able to get out of hand in a short time and meet all these requirements.

Whether Röttgen, Spahn or even Merz are secretly raising their hopes? If one of these three succeeds in making the leap to the top of the party and if the coalition negotiations between the SPD, Greens and FDP fail at the same time, there is even a tiny theoretical chance that Laschet’s successor could become Chancellor of a Jamaica coalition. “This is constitutionally conceivable,” says Sabine Kropp. But what would the voters say if a chancellor was elected who was not a candidate at all? Another dilemma. There will be no quick, simple solutions for the Union in the foreseeable future.

More on this topic in the report from Berlin on Sunday at 7:35 p.m. in Das Erste.