The CDU has made a hell of a start into the super election year.
The vaccination debacle and leadership vacuum are dragging the Union down.
It can not go on like this.
Comment from Merkur editor-in-chief Georg Anastasiadis.
In a downright fit of anger, the voters of the CDU in their former home countries Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate inflicted a debacle of historic proportions.
But the anger of the sovereign could increase in the super election year - when he realizes that there is no one in the Union who wants to receive the package: The local top candidates point to the "headwind from Berlin", the new CDU boss Armin Laschet on the Corona-Raffkes in the parliamentary group.
And the Chancellor?
Your people spread that Angela Merkel gave up the chairmanship of the party a long time ago.
CDU clap in state elections: Merkel's power vacuum becomes a nightmare for the Union
Merkel has not left yet, but shortly before the end of her term in office, the question of power has not been clarified: The German interregnum, the open leadership question, is proving to be the feared nightmare for the CDU and CSU.
The Union has become a reflection of the country that it has ruled for 16 years without interruption, or rather: it moderates.
As in the corona crisis, responsibility is delegated away - to Brussels, to the federal states, the districts, the municipalities - until nobody has to answer for the political failure that the Germans are going through so painfully.
Our system is frozen in bureaucracy and fear of making decisions that may later turn out to be wrong.
Nobody should be mistaken: it is not so much the Raffkes who make the citizens so mad as hell in the first place.
But the helpless dilettante the old CDU state party and its ministers in the deepest crisis since the war, which has already cost too many lives and too many existences.
Corona flops bring CDU and CSU into trouble: Success in the first wave laid the seed of failure
+
Georg Anastasiadis, editor-in-chief of Münchner Merkur.
© Marcus sleep
Paradoxically, it was precisely the success during the first corona wave, when Germany benefited from its strong health system, the short-time working system and the almost inexhaustible financial reserves, that laid the seed for the subsequent failure.
Instead of preparing for the coming calamity, politics let itself be celebrated and looked with a mixture of pity and arrogance at countries that had it harder.
After that, it wasn't just the vaccine and the rapid tests that were missing.
But also the (digital) strategy and the creativity to try something.
Notable exceptions are the mayors of Tübingen and Rostock, courageous doers who achieved pop star status during the crisis.
Söder?
Laschet?
The longer the Union waits, the more superfluous it becomes
The longer the CDU and CSU are now avoiding the decision of who should lead the Union as candidate for chancellor in the federal election, the more superfluous it becomes - because, as in the federal states, new majorities are forming and strengthening every day in the face of Quarrel in the Union leadership.
The Union must be able to expect from the new CDU chairman Laschet that he - if any - will finally put his plan for Germany's new departure on the table.
And CSU boss Markus Söder, who many voters trust to be a maker, should say goodbye to his mistake that whoever wants “Merkel votes” has to make Merkel politics.
After a year of corona chaos, too many citizens are fed up with that.
Söder will be able to provide proof of how things can be done better from April 1st - when Bavaria's family doctor's practices will (hopefully) finally be vaccinated without red tape.
Georg Anastasiadis
