CDU with Merkel CDU after Merkel

Angela Merkel is now in a situation similar to that of Konrad Adenauer and later of Helmut Kohli, the Christian Democrats with the longest mandate 1949-1963 and 1982-1998 respectively. She still runs the party, still she's safe. 'Cause the CD doesn't make a stick. The same applies to the party secretary general. The party is being held.

Five months after the parliamentary elections, Merkel at the Christian Democrats congress promoted a new broad-based coalition. And at this point it was largely supported by the vote. This vote was like a “call and so on!” But the message of the delegates this day was: “no more!”

One day the CDU meeting was no longer a Merkel party convention. She gave the longest speech to attract delegates to the new coalition with the Social Democrats. Merkel explained and clarified. Annegret Kramp-Carrenbauer almost four hours later he spoke with fire. As a general secretary, whose party is at odds with himself, may speak at best.

Her word went to her party. Most other parties she did not mention at all. Just another political grouping mentioned Merkel several times in her one hour speech: AfD, the right-wing populists, who in the electoral war the Chancellor had not mentioned at all. She called AFD antisemitism, which exists at the left and right extreme.

What drew attention and impressed was the talk, which exceeded the set time limit. She broke the taboo, for those who had long been accumulated despair and disappointment. Some even came in front of the microphone and declared their “no to” to the coalition agreement. It was usually well organized for the CDU at its conventions, a very broad and critical debate. When the referors talked about Merkel, they tried to express gratitude for what they had been through. But when it comes to the future of the party's work with a new programme, he is confidently named after new Secretary-General Kramp-Carrenbauer. What the party leadership spared itself after the 2017 elections -- an open and critical retrospect -- was now returned with great fire.

The most warm and enthusiastic applaud was not given after the party chairman's speech, but during the assessment she made to ministers now leaving, not on their own wish from the cabinet Hermann Gröhe and Thomas de Maiziere, after the first-time name of the Kramp-Carrenbauer and of the outgoing Minister of Finance Wolfgang Schäuble was mentioned. And four minutes of applause for Merkel came, because all of the young Christian Democrat Paul Ziemak kept applauding without thinking, while others had begun to discuss in small groups. One could not even applaud Merkel's talk.

The day in Berlin was with surprising and critical speeches a party transition congress -- following coalition talks and ahead of voting expected by Social Democrat party members for the coalition agreement. Before Annegret Kramp-Carrenbauer. Still with Merkel. And for most of it, it looked like a first CLU convention after Merkel.