Merkel’s party clueless about where to lead Germany

Bloomberg

For the longest time, Angela Merkel was Germany and under her the center-right Christian Democrats were the dominant political force in the European Union. Today the party is a shambles and its
new leader, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (AKK), can’t seem to straighten it out.
Just last month, the CDU suffered a historic beating in the eastern region of Thuringia. Mike Mohring, the defeated candidate, ripped into his boss in a furious election-night conference call. She told him to get a good night’s sleep and urged him not to do anything rash, according to a party official familiar with their conversation.
Next morning he went on national TV and proposed an unprecedented coalition with the former communists. For a party that helped establish German democracy in the West, such a pact would be heresy. “I don’t need Berlin to tell me what’s good for Thuringia,” Mohring added for good measure.
The breakdown of discipline in Merkel’s once-dominant party is symptomatic of a deeper crisis gripping conservatives across Europe. In France and Italy traditional parties have been overrun by populists. In Spain, the People’s Party is at a low ebb. And Britain’s Tories have been eaten from the inside out by the single-issue fundamentalists of Brexit.
The CDU is doing pretty well by comparison, the official joked, bitterly. At least it’s still in government.
But almost a year after AKK, as Kramp-Karrenbauer is known, took over the party job from Merkel, members gather for its annual convention in Leipzig engulfed in a power struggle that was unheard of during the 18 years that the chancellor ran the show.
Along with its Bavarian sister party, the CDU is leading in most opinion polls. But like its allies across Europe, it has failed to come up with a compelling vision for a world in which nationalism is on the rise and economic anxieties are growing.
Germany’s economy has been flirting with recession this year as Donald Trump’s trade war with China disrupts the global system that let the country’s exporters flourish. The flagship auto industry is wrestling with the existential challenge of switching to electric motors and the resentment in poorer areas of the East, like Thuringia, is proving fertile ground for the nationalist Alternative for Germany, or AfD.
Merkel’s decision to step down at the end of her term meanwhile has led to political paralysis in Berlin, opening the door for France’s Emmanuel Macron to challenge the German approach on everything from European budget policy to NATO.
Germans are looking for a leader who can stand up to Trump, Macron and China’s Xi Jinping and defend their economic interests.
But AKK’s efforts to set a new course by reconnecting with the party’s conservative wing and heading off the
AfD have left many rank-and-file members scratching their heads.