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With the Union, the devil is not in the details, but in the overall situation.
Either you say: Did Markus Söder really think that the CDU top would dismantle their recently elected party leader because of some surveys - for a candidate from Bavaria who was responsible for the worst CSU election results ever recorded there in 2018 and 2020 and is now experiencing how poll results are volatile?
In his short tenure as CSU chief and prime minister, he represented every conceivable position, including their opposite, that the compass needle itself is already quite crazy, only to dupe the sister party and one with his last-minute kamikaze course Pushing the chairman down the stairs that conquered the largest German state for the CDU?
The CSU is not ticking quite right!
Final in the race for the Union candidate for chancellor: Read our latest updates here
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Or they say: Does Armin Laschet really believe, with a board decision in which important CDU state chairmen and the Bundestag parliamentary group are not allowed to vote, to be able to proclaim themselves king - against a competitor from Bavaria who is the only one who has the chance to become the chancellor and to keep the parliamentary mandates for the Union? Laschet, whom nobody knows and who just missed the position in the surveys on chancellor qualifications, wants to dismantle a Söder who has worked his way up to the top of the nationwide popularity scale? Laschet accepts the split in the CDU with his kamikaze course, just to indulge his ego, the federal executive board is involved, and this political cucumber troop actually thinks they can get away with it? The CDU is completely crazy!
Markus Söder mobilized the Laschet opponents in the sister party with his promise on Monday afternoon that the fate of the Union parties would be confidently in the hands of the CDU. The debate in the CDU executive committee has shown that sheer panic is sitting in the neck of a number of CDU politicians. Quite a few of them want to delegate the candidate decision downwards, to a district chairman's conference or God knows where else, ideally to a "base", which apparently mainly expresses itself in many e-mails and calls. The CDU thus offers the image of a party that looks to a considerable extent incapable of leadership and thus makes Söder's leadership all the more visible. A leadership elan, of which it is not entirely clear what it consists of,except in robust requests to speak - the corona situation in Bavaria is in any case not significantly different than in North Rhine-Westphalia.
Such an overall situation now needs someone who can jump over his own shadow.
On Monday, Markus Söder responded evasively to the question of whether he would bow to the vote of the CDU federal executive board even if Laschet only clinched a 60:40 victory there.
The CDU result at midnight is not so far removed from these numbers that a mutiny in the Bundestag faction and in important CDU state associations seems completely out of the question.
Laschet has shown himself to be a power politician, but his position is not consolidated.
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Peace in the box only occurs if the whole Union camp could let go, which in the opinion of the Laschet proponents does not seem to fit Söder at all and, in the opinion of the Söder supporters, does not seem at all to Laschet, namely statesmanlike generosity.
Both could call a team Laschet / Söder and promise to do everything in their power to prevent green-red-red together in autumn.
It would be a premature Pentecost miracle after the past ten days, but surveys are definitely controllable if you stick together.
Konrad Adenauer already noticed that, back in the summer of 1956, when, in retrospect, he appeared to be at the height of his success and in truth was on the verge of a disaster.
At the time, the SPD and the Union were suddenly on par in the polls, as may soon be the Union and the Greens.
The Union turned the wheel around, publicly instead of relying solely on Adenauer on a broad team, including Adenauer's intimate enemies, pushed through the dynamic pension seen with horror by economic experts as an election gift and won an absolute majority in 1957 with the slogan "No experiments".
Manfred Güllner, head of the “forsa” survey institute, recalled this in his book “The Forgotten Voter”.
Khrushchev's suppression of the Hungarian uprising in October 1956 was helped by the CDU / CSU, but who knows what kind of indirect electoral aid Putin is now doing in eastern Ukraine.
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At that time, however, the Union still had a year. Today she goes after the candidate theater quarreled and unsettled straight into a federal election campaign, in which one can puzzle what exactly the message of the Laschet-Söder-Union could be. Prince William and Prince Harry in German? Is the new argument with us? While the Greens sing "Unity and Justice and Freedom"? Should we perhaps still ask Merkel whether she wants to continue?
So far, the Union has always come out of its racket and political tavern brawls quite well. But at some point things will turn out differently, and now a point in time could approach. Arguing is helpful in clarifying the situation. The cleansing thunderstorm has so far failed to materialize. To see the nerves of the most important German ruling party so far so brightly before a federal election is a starting advantage for the opposition. The greens will appreciate it. Some in the FDP too.