Friedrich Merz gets the opportunity to take action because Max Otte is doing him the favor of making a pact with the AfD. But the new CDU boss still has the real task ahead of him.
Friedrich Merz has what is commonly called a barrel. At the weekend he was elected CDU chairman with a top result. Angela Merkel had his offers of talks and other offers rejected, which put Merz in the favorable light of the conciliator and Merkel as a refusal in a sulky angle. Now a Christian Democrat has also done him the favor of making an agreement with the AfD, which is why Merz has the opportunity to really take action on the right-hand side of the CDU.
The CDU executive board has now decided on an exclusion procedure against Max Otte, who was nominated by the AfD
Fund manager Max Otte accepted the AfD’s nomination on Tuesday as a rival candidate for Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who is also officially supported by the CDU. Otte should suspect that he will not win the election in February. But that’s not what he’s about. The right fringe of the CDU sees the AfD as flesh of the Christian Democrat flesh; His political goal is restoration, his instrument is provocation, his resonance space is the social media, and people like Otte or the former head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maassen, get their confirmation from the outrage of others.
The CDU executive board has now decided on an exclusion procedure. And even if Friedrich Merz is not yet in office, he can praise it as the first brick in the firewall against the AfD, which he has announced that he will pull up. However, two imponderables still await him: on the one hand, party exclusion proceedings are laborious processes with an often surprisingly open outcome. On the other hand, you can only exclude people, but not the spirit that they spread. In this case, it is the spirit that denies everything that has been associated with the CDU in recent years, and which some Christian Democrats who now rely on Merz also pay homage to. Getting these members back on the right side of the firewall without making false concessions will be the real task for the new party leader.