This is a rather odd story to lay out.
Back in the very early part of 2018, Chancellor Merkel (who was at the time also the Secretary General/party boss of the CDU Party) decided to arrange the chairs, and leave the Secretary General position.
In doing so, she had a particular candidate lined up to fill the role....Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (AKK).
AKK was the Premier-President (Governor) of the Saarland. One could make the case, she was very successful and had very high favorable ratings in the region. She'd been in this position for 7 years.
Politics? Center-center (not right-of-center). Identical to Merkel? Well....yeah. For almost a decade, Merkel had led the CDU Party to mostly a position in the center of things (in some ways damaging the SPD Party because they were so close on most matters). If you'd tried to suggest the CDU Party in this period was right-of-center....the older folks would have laughed.
So AKK arrived in Berlin. Among the CDU folks....there was not all happiness because some of them saw AKK as an exact carbon-copy of Merkel. The way this was arranged? AKK was confirmed by around 98-percent of the party. AKK had two central jobs....manage the party apparatus, and ensure election campaigns were planned out.
In October of 2018....two state elections were held (Bavaria and Hessen). I wouldn't say they were negative....the CDU won in both cases, but these weren't 'great' wins as they had anticipated. Blame? Went to AKK.
Up until this point, everyone figured Merkel had designed everything for AKK to be the Chancellor candidate in 2021.
From the poor election result period, until mid-summer of 2019....things are moving along for AKK, and you can still sense that she's the primary Chancellor candidate for 2021.
But then we come to this Merkel-event in July of 2018.....the EU was set to have a President (first-ever), and the CSU guy (Weber) who thought he had everything lined up....woke up to realize the votes weren't there and suddenly Merkel appeared to have the 'better' candidate (von der Leyen, Minister of Defense in Germany). In a matter of days....von er Leyen leaves for the EU post, and this seat at the Defense Ministry is empty.
Pressure is mounted that AKK needs experience and face-time at a gov't post....so she ends up as Defense Minister. She attempted slip around this, by stating the obvious......two full-time jobs is not possible. That failed. I would imagine at this point...she was working 60-plus hours a week.
Over roughly the next 18 months....AKK walked into various issues, and her popularity declined. If you ask me....this was not the position for someone to be a Chancellor-candidate in two years.
So the day came in 2020 where she said 'enough'.....she would step down from the Defense Minister position when the fall election of 2021 occurred, and from the party boss position. She would also decline to run for Chancellor. The Merkel 'arrangement' basically failed.
At this point, Merz entered the Chancellor 'race'. It's safe to say there is no 'love' between Merkel and Merz. She is center-center on politics and Merz is definitely right-of-center. Merz also represents a fair number of players who were pro-Kohl from the 1980s/1990s.
By the end of 2020, we end up with CDU Chancellor race which is Merz versus Laschet (Premier-President of NRW).
Laschet is favored by Merkel. On debate skills? He's lacking and doesn't come across that great in polling.
With Covid influencing things....a full-up party conference is not possible....so they run an executive committee conference. Instead of roughly a thousand party members having a vote.....the executive committee group is composed of about 45 to 50 members. Yes, most of these folks got to their position because of Merkel. So the final vote in this 'primary' got Laschet appointed by the party to be the Chancellor candidate.
The polling for the CDU? It dropped. Week by week....it declined. Laschet simply didn't have the character or personality to sell the CDU 'brand'.
Election results? SPD won with 25.7-percent of the national vote....the CDU got 24.1-percent of the vote.
You can make the argument that it was one of the worst showings for the CDU in decades.
Laschet staying on as 'party boss'? No. That immediately went to a discussion and another party conference.....where Merz won the party boss position.
If AKK had never been dragged into the Defense Minister job? I would suggest that she'd be Chancellor today, and the vote percentage in 2021 would have been near 35-to-38 percent. We wouldn't have the SPD-coalition existing today, and the AfD popularity would be roughly half of what you see today.
This Scholz-versus-Laschet race? You can argue and make the case that you had two weak candidates....who could not charm the public. Together in 2021...the SPD/CDU-CSU combined results...don't cross the 50-percent point (first time ever since 1947).
It's a funny landscape to project. So much disconnect existing on the political landscape today because of the political play of Chancellor Merkel.
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