Suddenly everyone joins in: the Federal Chancellor, her possible successor, as well as the Hessian Prime Minister.

Angela Merkel caused a real surprise for the first time a few days ago when she vigorously intervened in the Union's election campaign.

At the start two weeks ago, she had tiredly praised Armin Laschet, the man who wants to sit at her desk in future, as a politician for whom the “C” in the name of the CDU he led is a compass.

On Tuesday she really jumped at him.

She hit Laschet's competitor Olaf Scholz, who, as the SPD's candidate for chancellor, managed not only to pull himself, but also the ailing SPD, to the top of the movement on the way to the ballot boxes.

Merkel implored the danger that with Scholz a government with the participation of the Left Party could come to power.

Eckart Lohse

Head of the parliamentary editorial office in Berlin.

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Laschet had also addressed this a few days earlier.

At the first television triall between the Green Chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock and her two male competitors, he told Scholz to his face that he should finally rule out a pact with the Left Party.

The Hessian Prime Minister Volker Bouffier joined in an interview with the FAZ.

The SPD candidate for Chancellor must have "the guts" to say: "Friends, there will be no participation of the Left Party with me."

"Found his topic"

Bouffier added, however, that it is difficult to say whether this is the turning point in the Union's election campaign. The number with the warning of a shift to the left in Germany, when the red comrades would come to power with the dark red comrades, is as old as the party itself with its predecessors. In July 1994, three months before the federal election, the then CDU presented -General Secretary Peter Hintze launched his “Red Socks” campaign and cheered that the election campaign had “found its topic”.

15 years later, in a conversation with the Kölnische Rundschau, he described the matter as a “great success”. The SPD was way ahead in the polls at the time. “So we were faced with the problem of having to shoot an election campaign.” Whatever the proportion of the warning against the PDS, the Union ended up five percentage points ahead of the SPD. The SED successors, known at the time as the PDS, did not come to the Bundestag, and Helmut Kohl was elected Chancellor for a final legislative term.

But in the same interview in which Hintze was happy about his coup, in 2009 he gave several reasons why something comparable was no longer possible for the CDU. The time was too far back when the far left could be brought into connection with the GDR dictatorship. In addition, the former PDS got an “old social-democratic paintwork” by merging with the party “Die Linke”. Such warnings should not prevent the CDU from trying the trick again. As early as the end of 2016, when Angela Merkel approached her last term in office, she warned again of a red-green-red alliance. The then General Secretary Peter Tauber even spoke of the “main opponent” in the election campaign. In the 2017 election, the CDU ended up more than twelve percentage points ahead of the SPD,and Merkel was elected Chancellor for the fourth time after complicated coalition negotiations.

The election campaign must be turned

So now again: The SPD is ahead, the election campaign has to be turned, and the CDU is painting the ghost of a shift to the left under Chancellor Scholz on the wall.

Can that help?

On the one hand, the starting position is not bad.

For tactical reasons, Scholz cannot afford to say a tough no to a coalition with the Left Party.

Even if the SPD lands in front of the Union on September 26th, it will probably have to rely on another partner beyond the Greens.

If Scholz were to categorically exclude the left, the FDP would be on the trigger and could demand a lot from Scholz to help him get into the Chancellery.

On the other hand, there is also. Scholz earned his long miserable reputation in the left wing of the SPD by being responsible for the Hartz IV reforms with the then Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. The communism sticker doesn't stick to his Hanseatic waistcoat. For him there would be no ideological problem in a government with the Left Party, but a practical one, because he has been in government responsibility long enough to know how unsuitable many positions of the Left Party would be for the day-to-day government of the fourth largest economic nation, both in foreign and foreign countries Security policy.

In addition, a survey carried out by the Wahlen research group on behalf of ZDF at the end of August came to the result that while 47 percent of those questioned considered a federal government led by the SPD with its partners Greens and Leftists to be bad, 37 percent considered it good. Otherwise, only one traffic light from the SPD, Greens and FDP received such a high approval rating. All constellations with a CDU chancellor ended up very clearly behind. The fear of the Left Party, which at least provides the Prime Minister of Thuringia, no longer seems so great.

After all, it is questionable whether Armin Laschet, who promotes himself with his reconciliatory image, can campaign credibly with a split issue. But in the end, none of that matters. If it were possible to motivate the insecure election campaigners of the CDU and CSU with the battle cry “Against the Left!”, A great deal would have been achieved from the Union's point of view. Merkel might have played an important role in defending the Chancellery after all.