CDU leader and Chancellor Friedrich Merz has once again categorically rejected any cooperation with the AfD. He also linked this position to his office as party leader. During a public dialogue on Oct. 18 in Meschede, in the Sauerland region, he said there would be no cooperation with a party that questions everything that has made Germany strong in recent decades—"at least not under me as leader of the CDU in Germany.” That statement proved to be a prophetic one: The pro-AfD current, so far a minority of Christian democrats, can be expected to turn into a majority, in step with unrest growing inside the CDU over increasing difficulties to find common ground with the government coalition partner SPD on important issues such as social policies, stabilization of the pensions, reintroduction of the military draft. Once momentum grows for Merz to quit the CDU party chairmanship, he will hardly be able to continue as Chancellor, too.
But if Merz prevails, the CDU may split and that would shake up the entire political landscape in Germany—no one other than senior German media commentator and talk show host Nikolaus Blome (Spiegel, RTL TV, ntv-TV) has warned in a commentary for ntv-tv on Oct. 18: “If the CDU, as the last remaining mainstream party, splits, it will spell the end of the German parliamentary system as we know it. Incidentally, it would also spell the end for the SPD, because it, too, would lose any prospect of power. Within the ranks of the CDU and [the Bavarian] CSU, however, no one will be able to avoid these questions in the long run: How can the [Christian Democratic] Union (strategically) prevent itself from being slowly, but surely divided by the AfD with the help of the ‘firewall’ discussion? And, more difficult: If there is no viable antidote, shouldn’t the Union try to divide the AfD first?”
