The coalition options because the state election in Thuringia was quite constrained. A CDU country politician breaks the taboo and proposes cooperation with the AfD. Party supporters react with rejection.
After calling that the coalition with the AfD cannot be excluded, some party colleagues no longer consider the Thuringian CDU member of parliament – Michael Heym to be adequate. “People like Mr. #Heym have nothing to do at the @CDU,” Marco Wanderwitz (CDU), parliamentary under-secretary of state in the Federal Ministry of the Interior, wrote on Twitter.
“We Christian Democrats clearly distinguish ourselves from the right and the left. The AfD is not a bourgeois party.” Former CDU general secretary Peter Tauber shared the post on Twitter.
Heym had said earlier this week, referring to the AfD’s result in the state election in Thuringia: “You don’t do democracy any favors if you alienate a quarter of the electorate.” According to preliminary results, the AfD reached 23.4 percent, ahead of the CDU, which slipped to 21.8 percent.
“By estimates, it is enough for an alliance of AfD, CDU, and FDP. I don’t think that it should be ruled out in the first place,” he said. After Heym’s comments, Thomas Röwekamp, leader of the CDU parliamentary group in Bremen, also Twitted: “I expect the #CDU #Thüringen to exclude attendants from the party. Cooperation with a fascist from the #AfD violates the decisions of the party, it is damaging to the party, but above all is anti-democratic and a betrayal of our values…» Christian Hirte (CDU), the East Representative of the Federal Government from Thuringia, also stressed on Twitter that Heym represents an uncommon opinion.
