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The day began for Armin Laschet with a phone call.
The new chairman of the CDU was connected to Martin Herrenknecht.
He is a successful entrepreneur in Baden-Württemberg and a Christian Democrat.
But not a happy one.
A few years ago he was so desperate about Angela Merkel's politics that he called for an "upper limit for Chancellors".
When Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer was not elected as CDU chairman in 2018, instead of Friedrich Merz, Herrenknecht even temporarily suspended his membership out of resentment.
He won't do that again after Laschet's election.
Because the Rhinelander has persuaded him well: "He told me he was a Merz fan," Laschet quotes Herrenknecht from the phone call.
Laschet replied: “Yes, I'm also a Merz fan.” And promised to involve the rival.
However, that had not yet worked out at the party congress on Saturday a week ago.
There Merz rejected Laschet's urgent request to run for a place on the CDU Presidium.
"I need something operational," said Merz, reports people who were present at the interview.
He wanted to be Minister of Economics.
Not only in a possible Laschet cabinet after the federal election.
Right away.
After all, incumbent Peter Altmaier is a "weak point in the federal government" with a view to the market economy profile of the CDU.
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Laschet was unable to fulfill Merz's wish, but did not contradict the harsh judgment on the incumbent, reported participants in the conversation.
That's believable.
Laschet had already reacted with spontaneous horror to a speech by Altmaier in a virtual meeting of the Prime Minister's Conference with the Chancellor in the spring: "Why does the Minister of Economics of all things say that?"
At that time, Altmaier Laschet did not jump in when he was fighting to reopen large shops with hygiene concepts, but had surprisingly suggested keeping small shops closed instead, because queues could form in front of these queues: "Peter, with all my love" had Laschet exclaimed.
"Perhaps there will soon be no such business at all!" At that time, the Chancellor had to reassure him personally: "Armin, everyone can see how upset you are!"
Laschet's "love" for Altmaier has not grown since then, just as little as it has for Norbert Röttgen, his second opponent.
The two are generation comrades of Laschet and promoted together with him in the 90s for an opening to the Greens.
But now Laschet needs the others: The 48 percent who voted for Merz in the runoff election.
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Their stronghold is in Baden-Württemberg.
Laschet made a special trip to Stuttgart on Saturday to give a speech at the CDU state party conference.
Although all delegates were sitting at home in front of the screens due to the Corona, it was not enough for him to send his greeting by video.
Because of all things the Merz fan club in the southwest has to pass the first test of Laschet's party leadership in the state election on March 14th.
The video greeting by the Bavarian Prime Minister and CSU Chairman Markus Söder showed how unpromising many in the Union see this.
He compared the green incumbent Winfried Kretschmann with "Bayern Munich".
He added that they too were “beatable”, but that didn't sound like a bet on the victory of CDU challenger Susanne Eisenmann.
The fact that the sound was turned off at the Söder speech resulted from a technical glitch, but should correspond to the emotional reaction of the Southwest CDU.
In fact, the 56-year-old top candidate has opted for a high-risk strategy for her election campaign: As school minister, she already called last year to reopen the educational institutions as soon as possible after the corona lockdown.
This followed their belief, shared by all experts, that digital learning can never replace real teaching.
But Eisenmann, previously not known to all citizens in her state, also used her parents' displeasure to draw attention to herself.
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But now, in view of the much higher infection values and an allegedly dangerous corona mutation also for adolescents, the mood threatens to change.
When Eisenmann and her competitor, the head of cabinet Kretschmann, announced on Tuesday, contrary to what the Prime Minister's Conference had agreed with the Chancellor, that the schools would soon have to be reopened, at least some of them, caused outrage.
"Please don't let ourselves be persuaded that every discussion, every struggle to find the right way, is an election campaign and therefore bad," she justified herself very defensively on Saturday.
In fact, she could fall into the same trap as her hapless predecessor in the previous state election.
At that time, the Southwest CDU kept a gentle distance from the Chancellor during the refugee crisis, whereupon the Green incumbent confessed that he was praying for Merkel.
In the pandemic too, Kretschmann was Merkel's most loyal squire alongside Söder.
The situation poses particular dangers for Laschet.
With some skill he has been trying for months to blur the impression from the early days of the pandemic that he is a Merkel critic and one-sided supporter of easing.
Without having explicitly revised himself, Laschet has long been more differentiated.
An election campaign by Eisenmann for school openings could not only embarrass him having to choose between the candidate and the chancellor, it could also bring back his unsuccessful communication from last year.
The potential for dividing the Eisenmann course became apparent immediately before the party congress.
Hans Georg Koch, the former government spokesman for Prime Minister Erwin Teufel, explained in a letter to the "FAZ" that the top candidate's attempts to "make political capital out of the Corona crisis" annoy him so much that he "after he was over forty Party affiliation terminate membership ”.
Since Kretschmann has successfully presented himself for years as the true heir of the last really popular CDU Prime Minister Erwin Teufel, this is a heavy blow for Eisenmann.
“If we don't like ourselves, who should like us then?” She asked rhetorically in her speech, but for some it sounded like a description of the state of the Southwest CDU, which has a long history of self-destruction.
Laschet couldn't use anything less.
As a precaution, he praised every single CDU minister in the state after he had already spread a good mood at the Rhineland-Palatinate CDU in the morning.
There will also be elections on March 14th, and the chances of recapturing a former CDU home country are not good either.
After these elections, the most important decision of the Union, not only for Laschet, will be made: the candidacy for chancellor.
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