Politico: A weakened Merkel still gets her way

The scale of Kramp-Karrenbauer’s challenge in uniting the CDU is clear from the margin of her victory — she squeaked home with less than 52 percent of the vote in a run-off against Friedrich Merz, a veteran Merkel critic who wanted to shift the party to the right. Another right-winger, Health Minister Jens Spahn, was eliminated in the first round of voting but, at the age of 38, his influence is likely to grow in the years ahead. [...]

AKK has been portrayed as a mini-Merkel. But she is much more of a traditional CDU politician than the chancellor. A Catholic, she joined the party in her late teens and worked her way up through local and regional politics to become premier of Saarland, in Germany’s far west. She is socially conservative, opposed to gay marriage, and has taken a tougher line than Merkel on migration — the issue that has become a lightning rod for the chancellor’s critics.

She also advocates bringing back military service as part of a plan for young people to spend a year working for the benefit of society. Merkel abolished conscription — a decision she defended in Hamburg, to only a smattering of applause. [...]

Not only did the party choose Kramp-Karrenbauer as its leader, delegates also supported the new U.N. pact on migration — an accord that has been attacked by right-wingers across Europe.

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Politico: Angela Merkel targets Trump, opponents, legacy in feisty turn

For a leader who avoids rhetorical flourishes and typically delivers speeches with the verve of a technocrat, Merkel’s address was uncharacteristically emotional, impressing even the opposition, who responded with enthusiastic applause at several junctures. [...]

Her reference to “patriotism,” rare for the leader of a country where the concept still makes many wince, echoed recent comments by French President Emmanuel Macron, offering a clear gesture of solidarity with an ally who has come under harsh attack from Trump for questioning his concept of nationalism.

Merkel’s primary aim with the half-hour speech, however, was less to defend Macron than to offer a spirited defense of the global order, the foundation of Germany’s post-war rehabilitation, which Berlin worries Trump is trying to dismantle. [...]

Trump wasn’t Merkel’s only target. She also took aim at those in Germany, including some in her own party, who question the necessity of the U.N.’s migration pact. The non-binding agreement, intended to offer “a collective commitment to improving cooperation on international migration” by setting standards for the treatment of refugees, was approved to little fanfare by the U.N. in July. Since then, it has become a lightning rod for right-wing European populists who claim that it would undermine national sovereignty and open the door to mass migration from Africa. [...]

Though Spahn appears isolated on the question of the U.N. pact, the question of migration nonetheless looms over the succession race. Even Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the CDU’s secretary-general and Merkel’s purported favorite for the top job, has pledged to revisit what happened in 2015 if elected in order to heal divisions in the party.  

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Deutsche Welle: Majority of Germans want Chancellor Angela Merkel to complete term

The poll showed that a vast majority of voters want Merkel to complete her tenure, which ends in 2021. More than three-quarters of her party voters feel she should continue. More than half of the supporters of environmentalist Greens, socialist Left Party and center-left SPD also agree. [...]

The voters were not that generous to Merkel's Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, who is stepping down as the head of CDU's Bavarian sister party, the CSU. Nearly three in every four voters feel that Seehofer should also quit his job in the federal government.

The polls put Merkel ally and CDU Secretary General Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer ahead in the race for CDU leadership. Kramp-Karrenbauer has the backing of 46 percent of her party voters. She was followed by Friedrich Merz, a financial manager who has spent the past nine years out of politics, who polled 31 percent. Jens Spahn, the 38-year-old health minister and a Merkel critic, managed just 12 percent. [...]

According to the poll, if federal elections were held this Sunday, 23 percent of Germans would vote for the Greens. More than a quarter said they would vote for CDU/CSU.

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Jacobin Magazine: A Departure With Consequences

Anyone who imagines her a moderate Christian Democrat will soon discover otherwise: “AKK”, as she is called by her parliamentary colleagues, attracted attention this August by calling for the reestablishment of mandatory military conscription after its suspension in 2011. In a discussion with the German journalist Anne Will a day before Merkel’s announcement, AKK spoke about the need to “protect creation,” i.e., prevent abortions, and years before made stirred controversy by suggesting that legalizing gay marriage could open the door to group marriages or even marriages between relatives. Most recently she spoke in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, lumping together the “social populism” of the AfD, Die Linke, and even the Social Democrats, and is in favor of reforming the market economy by bolstering the role of individual responsibility. This includes, for example, regulating the housing crisis not through state intervention but even more private competition.[...]

Reflecting the general trend of the country, three of the likely candidates lean to the right, but in different ways. With Kramp-Karrenbauer, Spahn, or Merz, the CDU would take a more openly conservative line against left-wing policies on social questions. Spahn and Merz stand for policies similar to those of conservative Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who governs in coalition with the even more reactionary FPÖ: namely, a staunch economic liberalism that is quite open to the far right, though Merz’s radical neoliberal agenda and aspirations for EU reform resemble the model of Emmanuel Macron. Spahn, the youngest of the three, has avoided polemics recently and kept himself out of foreign policy issues entirely, though this ultimately may reduce his chances as he no longer stands out as an international and controversial figure. Merz, on the other hand, has already been stylized as Christian Democracy’s “savior” by the German press for representing a balance between liberal economic policies and traditional values. [...]

Kramp-Karrenbauer would certainly offer a counterbalance to this trend. She could deflect the AfD threatening to become the strongest force in the elections in the eastern German states next year with her record of conservative values and would therefore appear to be a promising candidate. But just a few weeks ago Ralph Brinkhaus, a figure close to Spahn, was elected the CDU’s new parliamentary group leader, in an offensive directed against a Merkel-loyalist. Either candidate can hope for victory.

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Politico: Merkel’s twilight heralds German turmoil

The decision injects further instability into German politics, increasing the likelihood that Merkel’s grand coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD), already hanging by a thread, will collapse in the coming months. What’s more, it now appears inevitable that the race to succeed her atop the CDU will unleash a bitter battle over its direction, one that will further distract the party from governing.[...]

While Merkel said she intends to remain chancellor until the end of the legislative period in 2021, her decision not to run again for the CDU’s chairmanship when her term expires in December unleashed forces she can no longer control.[...]

She insisted the move wasn’t triggered by Sunday’s election, but by her decision over the summer, which she had not previously shared with the public, not to pursue another term as chancellor. Handing over the reins of the party now would ease the transition and allow the CDU, still Germany’s dominant party despite recent losses, to retain its strength, she argued. If Merkel really planned Monday’s move months ago, she kept the decision close to her chest, not even telling Kramp-Karrenbauer, who on Sunday evening insisted Merkel intended to run again for the CDU chairmanship.[...]

A persistent critique of Merkel in the CDU’s more conservative quarters has long been that she moved the party too far to the left, abandoning its roots. Much of that criticism has focused on the refugee crisis but it extends to social issues as well, with Merkel skeptics accusing her of steering the party away from its traditional values on family and religion. Merkel’s belief that “Islam is a part of Germany” is one of a number of her positions that conservatives take issue with.

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Politico: Angela rises from the ashes

For the Bavarians, the spat was always more about Merkel than refugees anyway. The past week offered the CSU leadership a chance to test Merkel’s support in the CDU. On that score, she emerged the clear winner. Any illusions the CSU may have had that the CDU would abandon Merkel in the heat of the moment have evaporated.

The crucial moment came on Thursday, when the two parties’ parliamentary groups, who normally meet together, convened separately to discuss the crisis. Dozens of CDU MPs, even some who disagree with Merkel’s migration policies, stood up to support her leadership. Within the CDU’s executive committee, only Health Minister Jens Spahn, Merkel’s most vocal internal critic, voiced opposition to her course.   [...]

In the event of a divorce, however, the CDU would almost certainly make a run for Bavaria — which it never does, out of respect for the union — thus diluting the CSU’s position just as it’s trying to fend off the far-right Alternative for Germany. In fact, it was concern over its tepid poll numbers ahead of an October state election that has likely prompted the CSU to challenge Merkel head on. [...]

A central fallacy of Seehofer’s plan is that Germany couldn’t actually turn refugees back at the border. In almost all cases, this would entail pushing them back over Germany’s 800-kilometer border with Austria, the last country most refugees pass through before arriving in Germany. Because Germany’s border infrastructure is located inside German territory — not on the border as was the case before the Schengen agreement for freedom of movement took effect — it’s not possible to simply turn people away before they enter the country.

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Politico: The beginning of Merkel’s end

To calm the waters, Merkel agreed to open the Cabinet doors to a new CDU generation. It was a painful concession for the chancellor because it forced her to push out longtime political allies such as Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière and Health Minister Hermann Gröhe. [...]

Spahn, 37, has been vocal and public in opposing Merkel on issues such as migration and dual citizenship. At a party convention in 2014, he elbowed his way into the CDU’s executive board, beating out Merkel’s own candidate for the post.

Earlier in her career, Merkel earned a reputation for dispatching such renegades swiftly and often brutally. That she failed to do so with Spahn is seen as a sign of her weakening grip on the party.

The chancellor’s waning influence was palpable at Monday’s convention. While delegates rewarded her hour-long speech with polite applause, they saved their enthusiasm for another speaker — Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the party’s new general secretary and a figure many would like to see as the CDU’s next leader. [...]

Despite the growing speculation over Merkel’s successor, chances are the chancellor will remain in control for some time. Earlier this month she dismissed suggestions she might step down after another two years as chancellor, insisting she “would like to serve a full term.”  

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