Blume on Lanz: CSU sees itself as the federal government's "anchor of stability"
Bavarian science minister Markus Blume (CSU) sees his party as a pillar of the federal government. Author Juli Zeh says the old-style big-tent party is "beyond saving".
Archive image · Photo: Michael Lucan / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 de (cropped and resized)
Bavarian Minister of Science and the Arts Markus Blume (CSU) called his party a "real anchor of stability" at federal level on the ZDF talk show Markus Lanz. The recent CSU party conference had put the motto "Closer to the people" at its center. According to current polls, the CSU would win 36 to 38 percent in a Bavarian state election, Blume said.
After the result in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where the CDU dropped out of the state parliament in Schwerin, the CSU is "still in shock", Blume said. A big-tent party should never have to ask itself, "Are you still needed?" "The biggest friend of the parties of the extremes is social media," he added.
Writer Juli Zeh disagreed: "The big-tent party of the old kind is beyond saving." People no longer trust politics to solve any problems at all, she said. According to a Forsa poll cited in the ZDF report, 87 percent of Germans are very or extremely worried that the federal government is overwhelmed.