If there is magic in every beginning, are we witnessing the end now? An answer to this question is provided by those who should have the greatest interest in an end to the traffic light coalition. In short: the Union is calmly dealing with the question of why citizens should vote for the CDU next time. No sign of the approaching end of the enemy. If we know the answer in a year, that’s still soon enough.
But if there is neither the magic of the beginning – we remember this powerful hallway selfie with Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck and Volker Wissing and Christian Lindner – nor the end, what are we experiencing then?
What is the progress about the progress coalition?
Strictly speaking, the euphoria was already over when Vladimir Putin started his war on February 24 a year ago and the Greens and Liberals began to scuffle with the chancellor over German arms deliveries. Since then, no one has known what progress is supposed to be about the Progress Coalition – the deliberate hesitation or the impatient action.
It’s the same today. Except that there was a role reversal – depending on the topic. Olaf Scholz hesitated when it came to weapons, Christian Lindner hesitated when it came to heating. It is only superficially about the matter. In the background, it’s always about ambitions and role models, which sometimes need to be concealed and sometimes wanted to be cultivated.
The chancellor moves with the greatest continuity. Sometimes he communicates sparsely or not at all, then again triumphantly when it comes to his own achievements, which then play into the world-shattering. Like the fact that Olaf Scholz talked Vladimir Putin out of a nuclear war with the help of Xi Jinping.
Cheap comments from the SPD
The role model that the SPD has given itself in this coalition crisis could perhaps be summarized with the popular wisdom: strength lies in calm. The chancellor’s lack of communication in his un-triumphal phases fits in with this. Or the cheap appeals by SPD chairman Lars Klingbeil to finally come to an agreement.
Or the picture that the leader of the Social Democratic parliamentary group, Rolf Mützenich, draws from his party: the problem solver “behind the scenes”. With which the Cologne native wants to say: It would have been nice, especially thanks to us.
In any case, such an attitude can be used to govern for longer, which is Scholz’s plan after all. Scholz’ style of sparse staging is already known from himself, but above all from his predecessor. And Angela Merkel has brought it to sheer 16 years.
FDP relies on solidity and closeness to the people
The others seek their strength in unrest. The FDP has now learned that its decision for the traffic light government has brought it five electoral defeats. Which is why she is again looking for her salvation more in the tried and tested: solidity and closeness to the people. Slowing down when it comes to climate protection, the rapid replacement of the heating system, as well as the rapid shutdown of the combustion engine car is metabolized as a liberal virtue.
The harsh rejection of the Green Economics Minister Robert Habeck and Green Party leader Ricarda Lang sounds liberal, statesmanlike and responsible when it comes across as follows: climate protection can only succeed “if it is based on the needs and realities of the citizens”. . Bijan Djir-Sarai, the FDP general secretary, wrapped it in cotton wool.
And the news that 30 government projects have not yet been decided before the coalition crisis summit on Sunday evening sounds positive from the Liberals’ point of view. Some of them, like basic child security, are extremely expensive, so having prevented them for reasons of financial solidity can be washed blue and yellow as a liberal virtue.
Climate, that’s the answer of the Greens
It is the same with the end of combustion engines, which the liberal Minister of Transport wants to have stopped single-handedly. “Openness to technology” is the reason, not the climate. Openness to technology is the FDP’s answer to the future. Climate, that’s the answer of the Greens.
And even if there are now and again doubts in liberal circles as to whether Christian Lindner can once again save the FDP from going under in this difficult situation for them – the communicative skills of the upper liberal remain unique.
Recently he managed a particularly nice coup when he said this bon mot to the always a little excited Katrin Göring Eckard as calmly as he was quick-witted: “If you stop telling the untruth about the FDP, I will stop telling the truth about the Greens. “Not everyone can do that.
Robert Habeck is currently studying how exhausting it can be if you want to present yourself as an avant-garde. He was then treated badly, even a draft law was “leaked”, it must have been a case of abysmal treason. Whereby:
Could it be that Habeck’s unusually badass messages have recently been directed primarily inwards? Like this one: “It cannot be that in a coalition only one coalition partner is responsible for progress and the others for preventing progress.”
Olaf Scholz knows who will be the winner
Robert Habeck as an intrepid artilleryman on the front of progress – that is the message with which this man believes he will shoot his way to the next green chancellor candidacy.
The avant-garde Greens, who are striving towards the world climate spirit, meet the solid, middle-class, down-to-earth Liberals, and both meet an intelligent social-democratic moderator-decider. Of course, Olaf Scholz already knows who will leave the coalition battlefield as the winner on Sunday night.
Because Scholz acts according to the Highlander principle: There can only be one.
