You rule better. You communicate better. You have the right goals for this troubled time. In truth, we have long been living in a green republic. This is a risk for the other parties. And a chance.
Wolfgang Bosbach is a very conservative man. And although he no longer has a mandate, he is a sought-after political commentator. Which has to do with Bosbach being popular, people appreciate him because he’s never turned his heart into a den of murderers.
Bosbach was the first on the station on Sunday evening. The Rhinelander dutifully congratulated his party friend Hendrik Wüst on his election victory. And then to congratulate the Greens almost effusively on their record result. “I never thought that I would say that about the Greens.”
Hardly a Bundestag session goes by in which non-expelled conservatives like Roderich Kiesewetter thank Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock for her clear foreign and military policy course in the traffic light government. Baerbock has long since become the actual Minister of War, which is also due to the fact that the Chancellor is perceived as hesitant and wobbly and the Federal Minister of Defense as a “total failure”, as Der Spiegel writes.
The “Bild” newspaper has long been asking whether Robert Habeck would not be the better chancellor. The doctor of philosophy and author is simply the best political explainer of his time. He is strong enough to communicate his weaknesses. Just imagine for a moment that FDP leader Christian Lindner had to justify bowing to a Qatari sheikh.
The Ukraine war acts as a boost for the Greens’ climate goals. Suddenly, climate policy not only has an ecological dimension, but has become a geopolitical factor. Hardly anyone doubts the need to break free from energy dependency on Russia – “forever”, as Baerbock puts it confidently and decisively, and again a little too triumphantly.
The Ukraine war, this major event that will shape the new world, one way or another, plays into the hands of the Greens. With the climate, and with the military. The Greens have the power and confidence to change their DNA. They are no longer a pacifist party in the usual sense. They are trying out their new line in Ukraine. They want to create peace with more and more weapons. And it works.
To illustrate this turnaround in pacifism: What the Greens are doing is as if the FDP were suddenly campaigning with conviction for tax increases and the end of the debt brake. And then be rewarded for it by their voters.
The Greens have a long history in North Rhine-Westphalia – both as an anti-industry party and as a junior partner of the industrial party SPD. Both have now come to an end. Led by party leader Mona Neubaur, the Greens met with the CEO of Evonik to exchange ideas. Christian Kullmann not only manages this specialty chemicals company, he is also Chairman of the Association of the Chemical Industry. Which is facing the greatest transformation in its history. Kullmann, who has always been on the side of the CDU, is full of praise for the Greens.
Neubaur, who, as you can tell from the way her name is spelled, comes from Bavaria, where she spent the first 18 years of her life, announces that “our children and grandchildren must also benefit from the economic power and prosperity that has characterized Germany for decades”. That doesn’t (anymore) sound like the traditional green consumption waiver and slightly nagging criticism of growth. Neubaur’s sound is Rhenish-optimistic.
In three coalitions with the Social Democrats, led by Johannes Rau, Wolfgang Clement and finally Peer Steinbrück, the Greens have pursued anti-business policies. There were epic battles between the custodians of industrial policy and the greens who had to be ridiculed by the arrogant social democrats as the niche better-off.
Those times are over, also because the old industrial structures in North Rhine-Westphalia no longer exist. The Greens recognized this, long after the FDP, by the way. But the story of the converted revolutionary is simply better than that of the one who always knew. Having the worse narrative is also a reason for the Greens to smile and the Liberals to tears.
In the meantime, the green industry fright of the past has a new goal: as Vice Prime Minister and Economics and Climate Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, Neubaur wants to implement her climate policy together with the economy. The new Greens know that’s the only way it will work.
The Greens have become pragmatic. It is no longer a matter of fundamental questions such as whether there should still be a chemical industry in Germany at all because it is dirty and harmful to the climate and global capitalist.
Rather, it’s about climate policy as a political technique: How big can the distance between the wind turbine and the next house be so that the energy transition succeeds according to the motto: wind turbines against Putin. This was also the slightly ingenious election slogan from Neubaur: “Independent of coal, gas and dictators.” The messages from the Union and SPD were the usual, boring punches.
This is not meant to be a homage to the Greens, that would be a misunderstanding. The point is to explain why the Greens are so successful that they can sit as a new people’s party next to the old big people’s parties, which is the case right now.
The fact that the Greens have a “run” and catch their own “momentum” has to do with the problems of the time – and with the staff. The Greens have the most convincing political personnel, which can be explained by the weaknesses of the SPD in particular, not only at the federal level but apparently also at the state level.
The fact that the Union is no longer dominated by polarization types like Friedrich Merz and Markus Söder, but that integrators like Daniel Günther and Hendrik Wüst have, so to speak, drawn level with their electoral successes in Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia helps the Greens – it makes black -Green not only for the majority, but beyond electoral arithmetic: socially acceptable.
Just as there are winners, there are also losers. The social-democratic decade that Lars Klingbeil proclaimed is coming to an end after just a few months. It dies not only, but also, from the social-democratic chancellor’s arrogance.
That’s what happens when you mouth too full.
Angela Merkel: The Chancellor and her time
