Bavaria first
Today the CSU presents its program for the federal election in the context of a
retreat of the party executive committee.
Even if both sister parties of the Union want to “make Germany together” as evidenced by their program, the CSU has, as always, drawn up an additional concept paper. It used to be called “Bayernplan”, today “The CSU program”, the old version probably sounded too regional for the near-chancellor candidate Markus Söder. The title also says: »Good for Bavaria. Good for Germany. «And that is still very modest when you consider that the issue of climate protection, for example, is about the question of what is good for the whole world.
My colleague Anna Clauß travels to Tegernsee to report on the CSU retreat. Your impression is that Söder is back in
"Bavaria first" mode
after his flashback at the CDU
. After all, the Bavarian Prime Minister has just tightened the Bavarian climate targets in his government declaration, he now wants to make the coal phase-out possible by 2030.
The CSU is still missing a real election campaign hit.
In previous federal elections, the Bavarians did well with the strategy of penetrating a topic that all CSU members played day in and day out, up and down the country until all those involved were completely exhausted: the "foreigner toll", the care allowance, the mothers' pension - it had to be an issue where sympathetic groups in German society received money, even if it was only a small, symbolic sum. In the alternative, at least the "foreigners" should pay, or criminals should be punished more severely.
But what is the winning theme this year? It is a complicated election campaign, unpredictable, unpredictable because it seems to be completely open which concern will drive the Germans into the voting booths in September. Will the corona pandemic ultimately dominate? It already seemed halfway defeated, but now the subject is returning, with rising case numbers, sluggish vaccinations and an impending fourth wave. Incidentally, today the European Medicines Agency (EMA) is likely to approve the Moderna vaccine for 12 to 17 year olds. Or could the topic of tax relief perhaps dominate after all, over which the CDU and CSU have only just had some friction?
Or has the flood changed everything and the Germans choose who has the best climate concept?
After all, the latest ARD Germany trend shows that the vast majority of Germans continue to see a very large (38 percent) or large (43 percent) need for action on climate protection, and this applies to the old and the young, Wessis and Ossis.
By the way, today is another nationwide protest day by Fridays for Future.
So what is the CSU doing?
To be on the safe side, she agreed on a mixture: an ecologically colored gift of money (= a dynamic commuter flat rate coupled with the CO₂ price), plus a bit of fighting crime (= higher penalties for fraudsters with grandchildren) and a fundamental social concern (= fight against anti-Semitism as State goal in the Basic Law).
Elective program: CSU wants relief for commuters with rising CO₂ prices
Thuringia last
Unlike four years ago, the
AfD
has so far
not played a dominant role
in the federal election campaign
.
Instead of the election campaign, the right-wing party seems to be preoccupied with the power struggle between the camp over the ailing party leader Jörg Meuthen and the members of the right-wing extremist "wing".
As an organization within the party, it no longer officially exists, but its members still make up an estimated third of the AfD.
In 2017 the right could swim in the Bundestag on the wave of the refugee crisis, but this year the big issues such as floods, climate change or corona are definitely not AfD winning topics.
Nevertheless, there are always moments when the AfD gets nationwide attention, and tomorrow will be one of those days. Then the state parliament of Thuringia will decide on the vote of no confidence that the AfD has requested against Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow. As our freelancer Martin Debes analyzes, Björn Höcke, the chairman of this "proven right-wing extremist" (O-Ton Verfassungsschutz) AfD regional association will try again to create chaos in the state parliament. In February 2020, Höcke succeeded in doing this when the FDP man Thomas Kemmerich was surprisingly elected Prime Minister with the AfD votes.
Now Höcke is standing for election.
In this situation, all eyes are on the
CDU Thuringia
. If Höcke were to receive even one more vote than his parliamentary group has members, the suspicion would be that it came from a CDU member. And because Mario Voigt, the CDU parliamentary group leader, obviously cannot completely rule out this worst case, the CDU parliamentary group decided not to vote at all. She wants to completely refuse to vote, even if that means that the CDU cannot then vote unanimously against Höcke.
The AfD is enough "the sheer presence to paralyze politics at crucial moments again and again," writes Debes.
You can say that Thuringia is politically broken.
It is led by a red-red-green minority government that would prefer to vote in new elections, but there is no majority for a new election proposal. MEPs distrust each other, parliamentary dealings are brutal, even within the coalition or in the parliamentary groups. "Nothing is good in the AfD at the moment," said the AfD honorary chairman Alexander Gauland once about his own party. Now you have to say that nothing is good in Thuringia - not least thanks to the AfD.
It is almost only a footnote that the AfD celebrated another success yesterday: One of its candidates was elected as a deputy lay judge at the Constitutional Court in Stuttgart, with 20 votes more than AfD people in the state parliament. After everything you read about the man, he is not known as a real agitator. As reported by the Tagesspiegel, the 66-year-old employee of an AfD member of the state parliament advertised himself in a letter to the MPs. He is a qualified social scientist, has worked in a leading position for consulting firms and volunteers to look after mentally handicapped and cancer-stricken children.
Should you reject a candidate just because he is an AfD candidate?
Now you have to know, however, that the AfD Baden-Württemberg is hardly more moderate than the rest of the party.
The "wing" is strong in the southwest, and this is where some of the biggest Höcke fans sit.
AfD boss Jörg Meuthen recently distanced himself from several of his party friends there in the ZDF summer interview.
And if you run as an AfD candidate, you have to be measured by the yardstick of your party, and be a peaceful guy yourself.
Especially since it is not about a forest and meadow court, but about an institution that decides, among other things, on the interpretation of the state constitution.
No confidence vote in the Thuringian state parliament: Why the AfD plan will fail this time
The gaps of Olympia
Today the
Olympic Games
in Tokyo will officially open, and so far it has been less the athletes than the number of corona cases in the Olympic village that have made the headlines. My colleagues Anne Armbrecht and Benjamin Knaack have researched a report for today about a no less big problem with the games: the
loopholes in the anti-doping system
. There are 7,000 employees who test all athletes on a daily basis. But because of the pandemic, the global test regime has temporarily fallen by the wayside. Fraudsters ran little risk of being exposed for using banned substances. Now athletes associations are warning: "We shouldn't be naive."
"The control activities had to be reduced to a minimum over several months," said the head of the Cologne doping laboratory, Mario Thevis, "so that the number of
samples
in the anti-doping laboratory in Cologne decreased by up to 95 percent of the commonly registered controls. "The World Anti-Doping Agency also writes:" There is no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced the global anti-doping system by temporarily reducing the tests. " But instead "other instruments" would have been used to "maintain the integrity of the anti-doping system," such as the whistleblower program.
But the German figures alone show how the testing system stalled in 2020: While there were a total of 12,910 controls in 2019, with a total of 17,498 blood and urine samples, in the first pandemic year of 2020 there were only 9,572 controls with 11,970 samples.
Will there be fair games?
One would wish the clean athletes.
Doping: how dirty will the Tokyo Olympics get?
Winner of the day ...
... is
Boris Reitschuster
.
The man worked for our competitor »Focus« for a long time, then they went their separate ways for unknown reasons, and Reitschuster's one seems to have led him into the world of oaths, where a corona vaccine is sometimes presented as a deadly danger and a corona mutation as rather harmless.
But now Reitschuster has won a victory, because he was sitting at Angela Merkel's summer press conference yesterday and asked an almost rational question for his circumstances about the contradictions or "cracks" that allegedly opened up between Merkel and her cabinet colleagues. After the word crack appeared in his torrent of words for the third time, Merkel mocked: "Is there anything else related to you besides cracks?" Reitschuster looked really embarrassed, earned laughter from colleagues and Merkel was celebrated for in the social media the casual clap.
But Reitschuster could hardly have done anything better, now he officially carries the medal of government critic in his community.
The attack was a "compliment" for him, he later wrote, and the sneering mainstream journalists had once again demonstrated their "unjournalistic closeness to the government."
Unfortunately, according to Reitschuster, the colleague asked an almost loving question, namely whether Merkel had always been looking forward to her appearances at the federal press conference.
I admit, I also laughed at Merkel's saying.
But Reitschuster laughs last, and maybe the longest.
Angela Merkel's last summer press conference: Everything is now
The latest news from the night
Trump on deadly storming of the US Capitol: "It was also a loving crowd, by the way."
In an audio recording, Donald Trump talks about the attack on the US Capitol - and plays down the attack.
Meanwhile, his party escalates the dispute over the reappraisal.
RKI weekly report: the seven-day incidence is increasing, particularly in 15 to 34-year-olds.
The Delta variant clearly dominates in Germany.
Young people in particular are driving up the incidence.
But it looks relaxed in the hospitals.
The RKI weekly report at a glance.
For unvaccinated professionals: NFL wants to cut salaries for corona-infected players.
In the preseason, some football league games were postponed due to corona cases.
Now the NFL wants to punish teams with Covid infections draconian - unless the players were vaccinated.
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Election Campaign: The Truth About Pension - And Why The Parties Fear It
I wish you a good start to the day.
Your Melanie Amann