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CDU boss Laschet: A problem called Maassen
Photo: CLEMENS BILAN / POOL / EPA
Monday morning in the leadership bodies of the CDU: Many issues, the situation is confusing.
The Chancellor speaks about the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The health minister warns of more Delta sick people.
And Armin Laschet?
Hans-Georg Maaßen, the former President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, takes a look at himself, who uttered a few sentences at the weekend that sounded as if he considered public broadcasting to be a partially left-wing extremist sect. Outcry in the Union and far beyond: How, please, can someone like that run for the CDU as a candidate for the Bundestag?
The question is right, is the tenor of the party chairman in the board meeting, is actually not possible, the Maaßen. Laschet warns that the Union's currently semi-stable polls could quickly tip over. “Such debates damage us.” And if someone should get stupid thoughts: With the AfD there will be no cooperation, not even negotiations. “We are very clear about that. I expect every direct candidate to adhere to it. ”Approval in the group, end of the debate. For now, anyway.
The Maaßen cause is an unpleasant matter for Laschet.
That is not surprising, on the contrary, it is exactly what most of the people have predicted or feared since Maassen's candidacy in southern Thuringia.
Whenever the former President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution allows himself to be carried away with statements that appear to be ideological conspiracies, the questions immediately arise: Is that the CDU's opinion?
Can she tolerate that?
Does she have to kick him out?
And where does Laschet actually stand?
Your own people get nervous
Every minute counts, especially in the election campaign. The CDU boss has now noticed that again. When Laschet had still not intervened on Sunday evening, a good 24 hours after Maassen's broadcast theories became known, they also became nervous in his party. You can't just "go over it in silence," tweeted Tilman Kuban, head of the Junge Union. The message: Armin, please do something, show attitude, otherwise it will be embarrassing.
But that's one thing with these troublemakers and the attitude. The SPD, which Laschet now likes to accuse of not calling Maassen to order loudly enough, once had a case like this: Thilo Sarrazin and his biological theses. At the time, the Social Democrats focused on escalation. Out with him, shouted Sigmar Gabriel, and when he appeared on television, the SPD chairman at the time would fillet the former Bundesbanker in a way that even made the feature section of the FAZ cheer.
The problem: Gabriel's attitude never paid off, instead it made the opponent bigger than he was. Sarrazin danced on the SPD for another ten years until the Social Democrats managed to get rid of him last year with all their might. The struggle with Sarrazin was not a glorious chapter in the history of the SPD. The party had been preoccupied with itself for far too long, in the end you knew what it was fighting against, but what it was actually fighting for had become less clear over the years.
Second example: Laschet's predecessor Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer and, as in the Maaßen case, the Thuringian Christian Democrats. At the beginning of 2020, the CDU there, together with the AfD, elected an FDP man as prime minister in the Erfurt state parliament. Kramp-Karrenbauer intervened, explaining the decision to fall into sin, which could only be cured by immediate new elections. That sounded very good, only the Thuringian party friends let them drain. Kramp-Karrenbauer's authority was gone, a little later she announced her withdrawal.
Laschet should have both cases in mind when he is now looking for the right way to deal with measure.
It doesn't make things more relaxed.
The CDU boss is caught in a dilemma: he knows that attitude can backfire if the announcements fizzle out ineffectively - or if it results in non-stop self-employment.
But he also knows that silence is not an option because it seems like one tolerates all nonsense.
Laschet's middle ground is also not without risk
So a middle ground.
"Such debates harm us," says Laschet now.
A sentence that sounds more like a meter and a half away than cutting off any connection to southern Thuringia.
Criticism, yes, but certainly not a party exclusion process, as the long-time CDU member of the Bundestag, Ruprecht Polenz, demanded on the rbb information radio - "also now in the election campaign, maybe right now, because it will always provoke anew".
It is Laschet's attempt not to mess with those in his party who can do something with moderation, nor with those who see him as a huge threat to the CDU.
I kept it internal, he can tell some.
I criticized Maassen, he can tell the others.
Typical Laschet.
He should know that this middle ground is not without risk either. He, of all people, who poses as a man with poise on many issues, seems cranked up in the Maaßen case. And if Laschet does not clearly draw a line with Maassen's theories, even publicly, the discourse could slowly shift, the limits of what can be said in the Union. The election campaign of some Greens from the second row would "remind of Trump," said Laschet, incidentally, in the morning session. Doesn't that apply much more to measure?
The debate about the candidate from southern Thuringia will continue, that is clear to everyone in the Union leadership. Maybe next week, maybe next month, sometime soon anyway. Because Maaßen won't sound like Richard von Weizsäcker all of a sudden just because there are federal elections in just under three months. That much is certain. Even in these confusing times.