She asks him in all seriousness about the course of the coalition committee last Wednesday: “Did you have to mediate?” That's a bit too thick even for Söder. That is “normally not the role of the Bavarian Prime Minister”. But it is “important not to set things on fire now”. Although hardly anyone knows more about starting things up than Markus Söder. As for who is to blame for the government's pitiful appearance, Söder is completely Solomonic. There are things where the SPD doesn't want something and things where the Union is skeptical. Of course, more needs to happen, and if it doesn't happen in a huge leap, then in small steps. That sounded completely different with Markus Söder.
Söder's diagnosis: Deep wounding in the CDU
Only now and then does Söder, as we know him, flash briefly. Who categorically insists on his demands. “The mini-jobs will not be abolished,” he announces and Caren Miosga picks up on the scent. Was he saying that the mini-jobs had been resolved? The mild new Söder prefers to fall into the old, belligerent Söder's parade and row back a bit. “Whether they will stay remains to be seen in the end.”
But as always with Söder, it depends on the nuances. Söder finds the fact that, according to surveys, two thirds consider Friedrich Merz's chancellorship to have been a failure “very unfair,” to add the sentence: “Perhaps one or two statements were not perfect.” Söder also makes no secret of the fact that he believes Merz's suspicion that the election of the state parliament president in Magdeburg with four votes more than the AfD and BSW could have been a "false flag" operation by the left to damage the CDU is absurd. “The thesis is definitely steep,” he says.
He had the feeling that the four additional votes came from a deep wound and a dispute in the CDU. To quickly add: “But no one knows.” Söder does not want to put his hand in the fire for AfD top candidate Ulrich Siegmund to become prime minister without votes from the CDU. That “cannot be said” based on the results of the election of the state parliament president and his deputy.
The AfD is “partly scary”
Söder is very skilled at avoiding questions that could be interpreted as direct criticism of a colleague from the Union (unless it is Daniel Günther). Miosga accuses him of the fact that his Hessian counterpart Boris Rhein is in favor of treating the AfD as normal in everyday parliamentary life, including allowing it to chair committees. Why Bavaria doesn't do that. Instead of rejecting Rhein's proposal as wrong, Söder says that people in Bavaria took a close look at the proposed AfD candidates and that it was "sometimes scary". “We have people who believe that the earth is flat.”
As easy as it is for Söder to generate spontaneous laughter with quick-witted formulations, he has a hard time keeping his facial expressions under control. Söder can usually tell whether something makes him happy, annoyed or bored. And of course it has to come, the Chancellor question. Miosga cites a survey according to which 32 percent want Söder as chancellor, more than Hendrik Wüst or Alexander Dobrindt, who was also traded. Miosga doesn't say where she got these numbers from. A recent RTL survey showed the exact opposite. According to this, 70 percent of those surveyed do not think Söder is suitable for chancellor, and even in Bavaria a majority of 59 percent shares this finding. In one clip, Miosga shows the two Eastern Prime Ministers, Michael Kretschmer from Saxony and Mario Voigt from Thuringia, praising Söder effusively.
The broad grin and the chancellor dream
And Söder? Sits there and grins broadly. It is an open secret in the CSU that Söder has never given up his dream of becoming chancellor and of course hopes for his chance should Merz have to give up. But he won't let himself be lured onto the ice. The CDU had the chance to take him twice, he says. But if the tide turns, for example if the election in North Rhine-Westphalia goes wrong next spring, Miosga will take action. When the CDU prime ministers called him and kneeled him. “I can’t imagine that,” says Söder. The Bavarian, who everyone knows how much he would like to become chancellor, instead assures sincerely how much he cares about a party friend who everyone also knows he can't stand. “The only personality that interests me is that Ilse Aigner becomes Federal President.”
In the second half of the program, Julia Löhr, head of the FAZ economics department, and the chairman of the management of the dm drugstore chain, Christoph Werner, sit at the table. And the discussion gets lost in the minutiae about the right reform policy. Miosga lets Söder get away with an important issue unscathed. Söder advocates several times for lower energy costs and calls for an energy tax reform. It was Söder himself who, with expensive special requests such as the mother's pension, ensured that the government did not, as firmly promised, reduce electricity taxes for everyone. Because there wasn't enough money for it. But the moderator Söder does not hold this point against her.
