After the voter thunder in the southwest, the Union wants to accelerate the freestyle of the chancellor candidate.
Laschet is ready - at Söder we haven't known that exactly since Sunday.
Munich - It's true: The new party leader Armin Laschet, who has only recently become incumbent, cannot do much for his CDU's electoral claps in Stuttgart and Mainz.
But his defense strategy could be dangerous for him: If it was really the popularity of the opposing candidates that decided the state elections to the detriment of the CDU - what fate does the Union expect only under a candidate for Chancellor Laschet?
Markus Söder did not let the moment of weakness of the rival pass by.
His suggestion that a member of the "Caution and Prudence Team" had won with the Green Kretschmann was a powerful bump against Laschet, who prefers to talk about openings.
And it was also a return carriage.
For the fact that Söder identified himself as a friend of the “no-covid strategy” a few weeks ago, whereupon Laschet countered that one shouldn't constantly “invent” new incidence values.
State election in Baden-Württemberg: election debacle for Union - Laschet has to take the candidacy for chancellor
So the Bavarian is attacking - but is he also attacking Merkel's successor?
Söder is not a bouquet.
Anyone who knows the CSU boss, who only superficially reveals his strength, and his cautious disposition, suspects that his appetite for the candidacy for chancellor can quickly vanish in view of the Union's slump.
And since Sunday, the Union's loss of power in the federal election in September has been a realistic scenario.
The troubled Union now rightly wants to speed up the clarification of the leadership issue.
Consequently, she would also have to try to persuade Merkel, who has so far been motionless to see her party's decline, to withdraw prematurely.
But either way, if he doesn't want to be embarrassed as the new party leader, Laschet must reach for the candidacy (and, as his slip of the tongue reveals, he is also determined to do so) - Söder can, if the circumstances suit him.
But it looks less and less like that.
Against a green-red-yellow government in Berlin, you can also do great politics from Munich.
Georg Anastasiadis
