Icon: enlarge
Party leaders Lindner, Laschet in May 2017
.
Photo: THILO SCHMUELGEN / REUTERS
Christian Lindner did not want to guess in advance who would become the new CDU boss.
To the FDP chairman, the situation in the power struggle between Friedrich Merz, Armin Laschet and Norbert Röttgen seemed too confusing.
However, he had repeatedly made his preference clear - internally: Armin Laschet.
Now Laschet is the new CDU boss and won the runoff election at the digital CDU party conference on Saturday against Friedrich Merz, with a lead of only 55 votes.
For Lindner and his FDP, the narrow victory feels a bit like political spring.
A sign of hope for the liberals, who hover between 5 and 7 percent in the Sunday polls.
From the pizza connection to black and yellow
Laschet has been ruling with the FDP in North Rhine-Westphalia for almost four years.
The Düsseldorf alliance is the only remaining black-yellow coalition at state level.
Laschet, of all places, once part of the black-green pizza connection in Bonn in the nineties.
Lindner and Laschet were in charge of negotiating the coalition agreement between the CDU and FDP in North Rhine-Westphalia.
The two Rhinelander know each other and trust each other.
One uses oneself.
more on the subject
CDU party congress: Merz, who loses the election, wants to become economics minister
Icon: Spiegel PlusArmin Laschet and the candidate for chancellor: The battle of his life An analysis by Veit Medick
Icon: Spiegel Plus New CDU boss Laschet: Now he has to take everyone with him by Florian Gathmann
New CDU chief: Armin Kohl A comment by Christoph Hickmann
Reactions to Laschet's victory: FDP serves itself, Greens demand clarification of course
A few days before the digital CDU freestyle, Laschet had attacked his opponent Röttgen sharply - because he had dared to criticize the FDP ("These are insecure cantonists").
Laschet replied that he believed it was a fundamental mistake to insult the FDP.
That drives them into a traffic light, a coalition with the SPD and the Greens.
He himself tries to keep in touch with Lindner: "The moment may come when we need it," warned Laschet, clearly setting himself apart from those in the CDU who think similarly negatively as Röttgen about the FDP.
Unlike after the federal election in 2017, when he broke off the Jamaica talks with the Union and the Greens, Lindner wants to lead his party into a coalition this time if the conditions are right.
The ideas in the FDP leadership go like this: It is possible that the Union will lose approval by the time the federal elections are held if Laschet or another candidate for Chancellor uses up the Angela Merkel bonus.
And if it was not enough for black and green in the September election, the hour of the liberals would strike.
But these are future scenarios.
First of all, Lindner congratulated “dear Armin Laschet” on his success and tweeted on Saturday: “To such a good cooperation and such sporting competition as federal chairman as we both had earlier as NRW state chairman.” And he added: The liberals had registered, that Laschet regularly emphasized the cooperation with the FDP - "this can be linked to in the federal government."
The sigh of relief at Laschet's success can be heard in the FDP - a victory by Merz could have caused problems for the party, after all, the CDU politician is very popular among FDP supporters.
The FDP leadership spoke of an "internal competition" in the event of a victory by Merz, because he would have fought for votes on the subjects of economics and finance on the territory of the Liberals.
On the other hand, it was hoped that in a camp election campaign under Merz against red-green, they might be able to penetrate more strongly.
But the Merz variant is now a thing of the past.
With Laschet, a CDU chairman is heading into the next few months who will probably give the liberals more leeway in the field of financial and economic policy, at least that is the hope in the FDP.
Lindner and others in the FDP also assume that Laschet will become the Union's candidate for chancellor - and not Markus Söder from the CSU or the health minister Jens Spahn, who will be busy with the corona pandemic in the foreseeable future and who supported Laschet in the internal election campaign.
But of course the FDP boss cannot be sure either, especially since it is not yet foreseeable how Merz, Söder and Spahn will behave in the coming weeks.
If the Union values fall in the polls, the currently much invoked discipline in the Union could crumble.
The Baden-Württemberg FDP state chief Michael Theurer once called on Laschet to intervene in the candidacy for chancellor and to prevent an "inner-party ordeal by a candidate for chancellor Söder."
"Friedrich Merz's high approval ratings also show that the Union is anything but closed."
FDP General Secretary Wissing
With the CSU boss as candidate for chancellor "and a policy of shaky hands at the height of the pandemic, the federal government would be threatened with incapacity to act and permanent discomfort," believes the FDP parliamentary deputy in the Bundestag.
For the FDP, Laschet also offers the chance to regain a role as a functional party - for bourgeois voters who are disappointed with Merz's performance, but at the same time do not want a purely black-green Laschet coalition.
This would give the FDP a kind of "guardian role" in a Jamaica coalition, alongside those Union forces that focus on economic and financial issues and fear the overwhelming power of the Greens and the Black-Greens in the CDU.
Wissing sees a split union
General Secretary Volker Wissing, who was only elected to office in September at Lindner's request, and who ruled in Rhineland-Palatinate with the SPD and the Greens as economics minister in a traffic light, called Laschet's victory over SPIEGEL "a signal for possible cooperation between the Union and the FDP Federation".
Icon: enlarge
FDP General Secretary Wissing
Photo: Reiner Zensen / imago images / Reiner Zensen
The "non-election" of Merz is also an expression of a reorientation of the CDU, economic and financial policy are no longer core issues for the Union.
"This increases the synergy effects of a possible cooperation between the Union and the FDP," he hopes.
The high approval ratings from Merz, according to the Secretary General, also show that the Union is “anything but closed”.
It will show whether Laschet can reunite the CDU and what course he wants to achieve that.
"But it would also be important for the Union to finally clarify the question of chancellor so that the fight against pandemics is less influenced by the internal Union chancellor, that would contribute to a clear objectification," says Wissing.
Apart from the internal clarifications in the CDU, the FDP will also look to other developments in the coming months.
The FDP's performance in two important state elections in March - in Baden-Wuerttemberg it wants to move from the opposition to the government, in Rhineland-Palatinate to continue its government work at the traffic lights - also decides the vigor with which Lindner's party will go into the federal election campaign in September can.
However, the FDP will have to manage that alone, black and yellow hopes or not.
Icon: The mirror