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Norbert Röttgen, Friedrich Merz, Armin Laschet (from left)
Photo: Michael Kappeler / via REUTERS
There are still eight months until the general election.
But the election campaign could really start on Saturday.
Then the CDU elects - after two postponements - a new chairman at its digital party congress.
And he could also become the Union's next candidate for chancellor and thus a possible successor to Angela Merkel.
We are pleased that there is finally a clarification with the coalition partner, says SPD parliamentary group manager Carsten Schneider.
He kept his fingers crossed for the CDU that everything would go smoothly in the digital election.
No matter who prevails: The SPD will "deal seriously" with the new CDU boss in the next six months, says Schneider.
What this approach looks like in concrete terms could be shown at the next coalition committee on January 27.
Then the new chairman of the CDU will be there for the first time.
Friedrich Merz, Armin Laschet or is it Norbert Röttgen?
The other parties, current as well as potential coalition partners, are looking forward to the decision, which will be made on Saturday afternoon.
Who do the SPD, Greens and FDP want at the top of the CDU?
And with whom would they have their biggest problems?
The Greens: Merz could be an opportunity
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Grünenspitze Baerbock, Habeck: Don't like talking about the competition
Photo: Kay Nietfeld / dpa
The Greens prefer not to talk about other parties at all, but only about themselves. At least they pretend that it is.
When Annalena Baerbock was recently asked which departments would be particularly important for the Greens in the event of government participation, the party leader jokingly said: "All of them." Chairman Robert Habeck said it was "not right, either in terms of content or strategy," to address others Process parties.
But whoever leads the CDU in the future is of course very important to the Greens.
After all, the new party leader could become the next chancellor - and partner in a black-green alliance.
Friedrich Merz see the Greens as the simplest opponent, but also the most difficult negotiating partner.
"Merz would be a backward-looking disruption - not just for the CDU, but for the entire party landscape," says economic politician Danyal Bayaz.
Should Merz win at the party convention on Saturday, the Greens are betting that many Merkel voters will turn away from the Union.
Their new home, so the calculation, would be the Greens.
"A CDU under Friedrich Merz would certainly be more shaped by a policy that moves far away from us and far from the social center of this country," believes Habeck.
The CDU would then get a "capitalist understanding of the market that has fallen out of time."
Although Merz has the least amount of overlap in content with the Greens, the Greens are not ruling out a coalition under Merz.
You want to govern - it is of secondary importance who is at the head of the possible coalition partner.
They would have most in common with Norbert Röttgen.
But they would also compete with him for groups of voters, which could make the election campaign more difficult.
From the perspective of the Greens, Laschet stands for the continuation of the Merkel course - also not an obstacle to cooperation.
But the party still doubts whether the next coalition really has to be black-green.
In the past few weeks, leading Greens have emphasized that they see most of the content-related overlaps with the SPD.
The SPD longs for polarization
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SPD Chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz: who will fight him?
Photo: HAYOUNG JEON / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock
The principle of hope prevails in the SPD.
And has been for months.
The comrades are counting on their disastrous initial demoscopic situation to improve once the new CDU leader is found.
Especially when a little later it is clear who will stand against her candidate for Chancellor Olaf Scholz in the federal election.
At present, as SPD politicians repeat like a mantra, the CDU owes its clear lead in the polls to Chancellor Angela Merkel alone.
But who does the SPD want at the top of the CDU?
Leading social democrats are demonstratively relaxed.
You can live with any of the candidates, they say.
And above all: each of the three can be beaten.
Internally, Norbert Röttgen is hardly given any chances in the SPD, the party is counting on Merz or Laschet.
The clear preference is: Merz.
With him at the helm, the election campaign against the CDU will take place on its own, say strategists in the Willy Brandt House.
The comrades long for polarization, for clear demarcation from the long-term coalition partner.
Her hope: Against a candidate for Chancellor Merz it is much easier than against Laschet, who is likely to continue Merkel's course.
A Scholz campaign with a classic socio-political core could ignite in competition with Merz.
But there are also voices in the SPD who consider Laschet to be the better opponent.
The Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia made himself vulnerable in the corona pandemic.
In addition, Laschet's personal values in surveys are significantly worse than those of Merz.
Laschet would also be the more pleasant partner for the SPD for a renewed grand coalition.
After twelve years of GroKo since 2005, the desire for a further alliance with the Union is limited.
Hardly anyone in the SPD wants to rule this out completely.
With Laschet, the SPD might have similar profiling problems as in the alliance with Merkel.
But she could rule with him, comrades, rather than with Merz.
The FDP relies on Laschet
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Have ruled together before: FDP boss Lindner and NRW Prime Minister Laschet (in June 2017)
Photo: Marcel Kusch / dpa
For the Liberals, currently only six to seven percent in the polls (in the last federal election it was 10.7 percent), the decision in the CDU power struggle is closely linked to a power perspective in autumn.
If it is not enough for black and green, the party could be asked as a third partner.
FDP leader Christian Lindner, who stepped out of the Jamaica negotiations with the Union and the Greens in 2017, wants to lead the party into government this time - if the conditions are right.
From Lindner's point of view, Laschet as CDU leader - in the FDP, in this case, he is also expected to be a candidate for chancellor - would be the best option: On the one hand, he worked out the CDU / FDP coalition agreement with Lindner in 2017 in NRW, they trust each other.
Laschet is also committed to black and yellow.
That would not only upgrade Lindner's party as a functional party, but also leave room for economic and financial issues.
Merz, on the other hand, is a difficult, ambivalent partner for the FDP.
In November he had Lindner present his book demonstratively.
Among the FDP supporters, he enjoys great approval because of his economic and financial competence, the election campaign against him would "become a kind of internal competition," it is said in FDP leadership circles.
In addition, with Merz a sharper polarization in the election campaign would be likely, the FDP could also benefit from a demarcation against red-green, also with its own financial and economic issues.
And one more tactical consideration gives the Liberals hope for Merz: With him as chancellor candidate, the old loan model from earlier black and yellow times could experience a renaissance in the Bundestag election: After that, many Union voters vote for their promising direct candidate, the second vote would go against it the FDP.
It would be difficult for the Liberals if Norbert Röttgen prevailed.
Röttgen attacked the FDP surprisingly harshly on Wednesday, accusing it of "historical failure" because it once refused to join a Jamaican coalition.
Competitor Laschet condemned the attack: insulting the FDP is a fundamental mistake, "that drives everyone into the traffic light," an alliance of the SPD, FDP and the Greens.
From circles of the FDP leadership it was said to SPIEGEL: »Röttgen wants to lead the Union further to the left.
This makes the role of the FDP as an advocate for the center even more urgent «.
Röttgen thus proves a "similar instinct for the bourgeois voters" as in the state elections in 2012, after the defeat of which he was even dismissed as Federal Environment Minister by Chancellor Angela Merkel, so the sarcastic hint.
In the FDP top they consoled themselves with the hope that Röttgen will enter the race on Saturday as an outsider.
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