Since Markus Söder and Armin Laschet are not fundamentally going in different directions politically, the CSU chief justified his better suitability as a candidate for chancellor with his lead in the polls.
But the undertone that sometimes resonates in Söder's statements about Laschet is different.
"I don't think it is wise to make a 'Helmut Kohl 2.0' policy out of the past after the progressive Merkel years," he told the Süddeutsche Zeitung immediately after the decision for Laschet.
Eckart Lohse
Head of the parliamentary editorial office in Berlin.
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That would be “far too old-fashioned,” added Söder, and nobody wanted the old Union from the nineties back.
"We need a political new deal instead of old school." That was not a criticism of Laschet's climate policy or his handling of the corona pandemic.
That was criticism of the person Laschet, whom Söder portrayed as having fallen out of time.
It would be an exaggeration to speak of a law that only those who had what it takes to hold a long chancellorship who were previously mocked by the political competition.
But there are certain abnormalities.
Konrad Adenauer, who ruled for 14 years, was exposed to arrogant accusations, especially from SPD chairman Kurt Schumacher.
Goethe's vocabulary comprised 29,000 words, Adenauer's only 500.
Helmut Kohl, who in 16 years of chancellorship became the engine of reunification and the deepening of European integration, was particularly often met with scorn and ridicule. “There was a power failure in the Chancellery, Kohl stood on the escalator for two hours.” That was just one of countless jokes that portrayed Kohl as dumb and intellectually unsatisfactory. The vernacular and the media took part, of course other parties too. But the driving force was often the CSU. Kohl's Bavarian adversary Franz Josef Strauss said in 1982, the year in which Kohl was to become chancellor, that the CDU chairman would never get this office. He lacked the "character, the intellectual and the political prerequisites, he lacks everything for it". It is documented in a Reclam volume with the title “Politicians abuse politicians”.
"Chancellor, just treat the girl well"
Angela Merkel, who will soon be completing her sixteenth year as Chancellor, was referred to as a “girl” in the Union at the end of the last century, which was not exactly teeming with strong women, when she was already Federal Minister. Long after his chancellorship ended in 2005, Kohl claimed in an interview with “Bunte” and “Super Illu” that the CSU Post Minister Wolfgang Bötsch first applied the term to Merkel. When he, Kohl, was annoyed with her once, Bötsch said: “Chancellor, just treat the girl well.” Shortly before her first election as Chancellor in 2005, Merkel told “Focus” that she had a whole Sunday Couldn't work after reading that CSU politicians called her a “zone quail”.Insults because of their East German origins particularly hurt them.
Top politicians regardless of which party they like to share in their rhetorical battles with competitors from other parties or from their own party. There are no fundamental exceptions. But there is something special about the relationship between the CSU and the CDU. When the Bavarians, who are usually not undersupplied with self-confidence, sense that someone is fighting their way up again at the big sister party, which heralds the next era with a CDU chancellor, they take off their gloves in Munich. Söder's sentence that the election victory of the CDU in Saxony-Anhalt under Reiner Haseloff, whom he referred to as his friend, also gave national politics a tailwind and of course also "Armin", came down to Berlin from above.
Söder apparently suspects that even in the eighth decade of German history there could be nothing with a CSU chancellor.
That a head of government from the CDU could come instead, to whom people get used to.
Over the years they have given him a nickname that doesn't sound like hero worship, but feels like you're in good hands.
Like “the old man” for Adenauer or “Mutti” for Merkel.
Guttenberg quickly became the poll's favorite
However, Armin Laschet will not feel certain that it will work with his chancellorship just because there is sharp fire from the south. Because whether the mechanisms of the past still apply is open. Even in the largely calmly functioning German democracy, which is used to long chancellorhoods, it was important that the head of government did well in the popularity surveys. But they had time to develop an aura, the audience was patient.
By the end of the first decade of this century at the latest, when smartphones and social media became a daily companion for many people, this patience will be over. When the CSU politician Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg quickly turned from an unknown member of the Bundestag to a poll favorite, who was even given the authority of the Chancellery, the high-speed age of politics had dawned. The Green politician Joseph Fischer, who is familiar with power mechanisms, came to the conclusion that Guttenberg was "the first German top politician of the Twitter and Facebook generation".
Just because Guttenberg failed doesn't mean that the mechanisms of his ascent have lost their validity. Laschet, who at the age of sixty did not belong to the Twitter and Facebook generation, and certainly not to Instagram or Snapchat, has just looked for a consultant who should make him more sure-footed in social networks. Does that help?