Söder keeps Merz in limbo

In the CDU, it is always said that the CDU leader has the automatic right to run for chancellor. It should therefore go without saying that Friedrich Merz will take on the job. But it is not. This is also down to Markus Söder.

In view of the catastrophic situation of the coalition, the fact that the CDU/CSU is also unable to fully exploit its potential at the moment has been somewhat overlooked. There is a kind of covert power struggle going on in the CDU, in which CSU leader Markus Söder is also involved.

Although Merz has led both the party and the joint CDU/CSU parliamentary group for almost two years, it is not clear within the CDU/CSU that he will be the candidate for chancellor. Even in the event of a new election, in which the parties would have to quickly decide who would stand for them in the election campaign, Söder only sees Merz as the most likely solution, not a certainty: "He would certainly be the favorite in the event of a quick decision," Söder told Stern magazine.

The interview provides some insight into the internal constitution of the CDU/CSU. "Friedrich Merz and I agree: new elections would be the fairest way forward," says Söder in the interview. However, the demand did not come from both of them together, but only from the CSU leader - Merz merely endorsed it.

Merz does it when he wants to - actually

In principle, the CDU leader automatically has the first right of access to the Union's candidacy for chancellor, even if this has not always been so easy to implement in practice. In 2021, for example, when CDU leader Armin Laschet was only able to prevail against Söder with difficulty. In the history of the Federal Republic of Germany, the CDU/CSU has only deviated from the principle of making the CDU leader the candidate for chancellor three times: in 1965, when Ludwig Erhard was the CDU/CSU candidate for chancellor, and in 1980 and 2002, when the CDU/CSU sent the CSU leader - Franz Josef Strauß on the first occasion and Edmund Stoiber on the second - into the race.

This shows that the matter should actually be clear: Merz will do it if he wants to. There is no doubt that he wants it. Söder knows all this too. "A party and parliamentary group leader is always in pole position," he says. But why is Merz only in pole position, why is he only the "favorite" and not automatically the designated candidate for chancellor?

Merz has said that he wants a decision on his candidacy for chancellor to be made in late summer 2024, although it remains unclear whether he means before or after the state elections in eastern Germany. Elections will be held in Saxony and Thuringia on September 1 and in Brandenburg on September 22. From today's perspective, the CDU will probably not be a resounding success in any of the three federal states. In Thuringia, the CDU is in a neck-and-neck race with the Left Party for second place behind the AfD, and a majority for a functioning state government is still not in sight there. In Saxony, the CDU is still clearly in second place, also behind the AfD, but would still need at least two parties to form a government as things stand. In Brandenburg, things are only looking better insofar as the CDU is hoping to overtake the SPD and become prime minister in the future. So far, none of the polls have been good enough for this.

September would not be an advantage for Merz

It is unlikely that Merz sees the state elections as a tailwind with which he can sail into the chancellor candidacy and then on to the Bundestag election campaign. If Söder proposes, as he did in August, to postpone the decision on the candidate for chancellor until after the state elections in eastern Germany, then he could have an ulterior motive - and not one that would be good for Merz.

Of course, there is no shortage of praise for Merz in the interview: "Friedrich Merz is doing a very good job. We work very well together." The collaboration with him is "really good". "Of the three CDU chairmen I have experienced as CSU leader, he is the one with the most in common." It is striking that Söder always links praise for Merz to himself, to the cooperation or the common ground. When asked whether he doesn't get on better with North Rhine-Westphalia's Minister President Hendrik Wüst, he replies that he has been friends with Wüst for years. "We get on extremely well. But that's not the point. The key question regarding the candidacy for chancellor is: who can bundle the Union's votes the most? Then the CDU has to decide."

Just this Tuesday, the RTL/ntv trend barometer showed that the answer to Söder's key question is not clearly in favor of Merz. In a hypothetical two-party constellation, in which Germans would only have the choice between Merz and Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the SPD incumbent comes in at 36%. Only 32% say they would vote for Merz, although the CDU/CSU still performs much better than the SPD in the Sunday poll. The survey also shows once again that Scholz is better received by his party's supporters than Merz is by CDU and CSU supporters: 86% of SPD supporters would opt for the incumbent if they had the choice between Scholz and Merz. Only 66% of CDU supporters would opt for Merz.

Söder would not have made the plumbing mistake

You can become chancellor with such poll results, as Scholz proved in 2021. But also candidate for chancellor? "We're not running for a vacation job here," says Söder in Stern. He says "we", although he was asked about the chancellorship and emphasizes that an "option as chancellor candidate" is offered to a CSU chairman "at most once in a lifetime". "It's like a penalty shoot-out: Who can you trust to take the last penalty kick? That's the wood politicians have to be made of - regardless of whether they are prime minister or want to become chancellor."

This is precisely the question: Can the CDU/CSU entrust the last penalty kick to a man who insults the chancellor in the Bundestag as a "plumber of power" and thus insults not Scholz, but tens of thousands of craftsmen? Söder tells Stern that plumbing is an honorable profession. In other words, he would not have said such a thing.

Yet such slips of the tongue are not uncommon with Merz. Even the "Bild" newspaper already ran the headline, in a different context: "Merz with a new embarrassing slip-up". Remarks such as the one about asylum seekers who "had their teeth redone" while "the German citizens next door" did not get appointments also required at least some explanation.

Merz as chancellor of a black-red coalition - really?

Such "blunders" also often show that Merz only has limited support from the CDU/CSU minister presidents. It's not just Söder, Wüst and the head of government in Schleswig-Holstein, Daniel Günther, also like to signal how independent they are. This applies not only to the debate on the debt brake, but also to Michael Kretschmer (Saxony), Reiner Haseloff (Saxony-Anhalt) and Kai Wegner (Berlin), although none of them are seen as potential candidates for chancellor. Hesse's Minister President Boris Rhein at least did Merz the favor of ending the coalition with the Greens.

However, this is precisely where another problem lies for Merz: like Söder, he is explicitly backing a coalition with the SPD to replace the traffic light system. This constellation was already difficult under Chancellor Angela Merkel and was not really popular with either the CDU/CSU or the SPD. In addition, the relationship between Merz and Scholz is extremely poor. It is hard to imagine the two of them discussing in confidence how their parties will work together in future after a general election. Of course, a black-red coalition is currently the most likely next coalition. But would it be successful with Merz at the helm, given all the antipathy in the SPD that he is triggering and reinforcing?

In short: Merz is anything but a given as the CDU/CSU's candidate for chancellor. Söder knows this and is doing nothing to change it. This could ultimately benefit him - but also someone else.