Will Germany's WerteUnion share the Tea Party's fate?
Germany's "WerteUnion" (values union) was founded in 2017 by members of Angela Merkel's Christian Democrat Union (CDU) who believed Germany's last big-tent party had moved too far left. The movement followed a similar path to the US Tea Party, which emerged in 2009 within the Republican Party, bringing together libertarians and right-wing populists focused on challenging the leadership of the Republican Party that they felt wasn't doing enough to confront then-Democratic President Barack Obama. In contrast, the WerteUnion focused its ire within the center-right CDU itself on Chancellor Angela Merkel, who they saw as being to liberal. Expansion of daycare that challenged the conservative family model, the end of military conscription, and first and foremost Merkel's open policy on migration led some German conservatives to believe they had lost control of their party. "We wanted to reverse the left-wing course that Merkel undertook," WerteUnion's former chair and founding member Alexander Mitsch told DW. Merkel's shifts in policies allowed her to capture the center and her party to stay in power for the sixteen years of her tenure as chancellor. But like in the US, those changes led to growing resistance from the right. "It's a typical reflex of a process of change in a party," political scientist Uwe Jun told DW. "Some groups shout: we don't want that, that goes too far for us!" The far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD), founded in 2013 by eurosceptic academics, had risen in the polls when they zoomed in on growing xenophobic sentiment in 2016 in the wake of the influx of refugees, mainly from Syria. While the AfD became the opposition to the right of Merkel outside of the party, the WerteUnion grew to several thousand members and became the opposition within the party although it is not officially a party organization. Its members supported and nurtured relationships with politicians to the right of Merkel within the CDU and its more conservative regional sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU) in Bavaria and even the far-right. Watch video 04:21 Germany votes 2021: DW Analysis of conservative platform  Even politicians in the CDU's mainstream seemed to have toyed with supporting the inner-party far-right to counter the rise of the populists In 2018 current German Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn sent a letter of support to the opening of a meeting of the WerteUnion encouraging them to act in a broader way to make the AfD "superfluous." The WerteUnion wanted to restrict immigration, strengthen the German military, and lower taxes. But despite the commitment to cutting back government finances, the group was never as committed to fiscal conservatism or as unified as the Tea Party were. "They oppose Merkel's policies but they don't really have a specific idea how the CDU should develop. This makes them different from the Tea Party movement," Professor Andreas Rdder of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz told DW. "They have a clear idea of limited government and lean state but here there is no vision. It is the rather vague idea of the good old times when the CDU was much closer to their minds." Watch video 03:00 Tea Party movement takes on President Obama (2.11.2010)  Those "good old times" harken back to the 1950s, not long after the CDU was founded as an interdenominational party with its roots in the Zentrum Partei of the Weimar republic: Staunchly anti-communist, with a belief in law and order, a business-friendly ideology, and conservative family values with stay-at-home moms, anti-abortion and no acceptance of same-sex relationships. In the years since its founding, the WerteUnion has moved even further to the right, straining further the relationship with the CDU/CSU's center. The Tea Party initially also experienced strain with the leadership of the Republicans because of its right-wing positions. Though in 2016, the US publication Politico noted that the Tea Party movement was essentially completely dead, partly because some of its ideas and combative style of politics had been adopted by the mainstream Republican Party. Now the WerteUnion's star is also sinking. The German-American economist Max Otte took over as head of the Werteunion in May 2021  Pandering to the AfD  There has been an exodus from its ranks following the election of Max Otte as the new head of the group at the end of June. Prominent CDU sympathizers like Friedrich Merz and the controversial former spy-chief Hans-Georg Maassen have distanced themselves. Otte is close to the AfD and even admitted voting for the party in the last general election in 2017. Otte is expected to try to move the WerteUnion closer to the AfD, although any form of rapprochement with the AfD has continuously been pronounced a red line by the CDU leadership. After Otte was elected the CDU/CSU chair and chancellor candidate Armin Laschet who represents the Merkel-wing of the party was dismissive of the WerteUnion stressing "this group has nothing to do with the CDU." Since Otte's election, there has been a wave of defections and splits in the group. According to Oliver Kmpf, deputy head of the group in the southwestern state of Baden-Wrttemberg, it still has about 3,700 members. That number pales in comparison to the CDU's overall 400,000 members and the CSU's 140,000. But the outflow from the WerteUnion has damaged the influence it did have. "The name has been destroyed," Kmpf said. The WerteUnion's apparent near-collapse has proceeded rapidly but its demise seems unlikely to resolve the conflict between the right and left-wing in the CDU/CSU that has split parties in other democracies in recent years. "The WerteUnion is destroying itself. It's imploding. It's the same process of self-radicalization. This is the same pattern you can observe with the Tea Party," said Rdder. "I don't think the WerteUnion will be a peril for the existence of the CDU," he said. But he believes the division in the party as a heritage of Merkel will continue. While you're here: Every Tuesday, DW editors round up what is happening in German politics and society, with an eye toward understanding this year's elections and beyond. You can sign up here for the weekly email newsletter Berlin Briefing, to stay on top of developments as Germany enters the post-Merkel era.