AfD plans to take over government: The “traitors” from the CDU should hold the stirrups

In any other party he would probably have had to resign long ago because of nepotism, in the AfD Saxony-Anhalt the parliamentary director Tobias Rausch can sit with his legs apart on the MDR and watch the program “Fakt ist!” say what his roadmap is for an AfD government: “There is the option that one or two MPs will join us and found a new group [in the state parliament].”

Rausch, like top candidate Ulrich Siegmund the day after the election, openly admits what the extreme right-wing party previously denied - namely that the AfD is trying to win renegade CDU MPs to its side. According to the AfD's plan, these defectors should form a group and become stirrups for the first right-wing extremist state government after 1945.

The AfD is three MPs short of an absolute majority. Even if the BSW abstained in the third round of voting, an AfD Prime Minister would not be so easily elected with a simple majority because the CDU, Greens, SPD and Left together have 39 seats and therefore have the same number of votes as the AfD - mathematically a stalemate situation, extremely fragile for all sides.

On Monday evening it became clear that an AfD coalition with CDU defectors is the preferred option of the right-wing extremists. It was not for nothing that top candidate Ulrich Siegmund also said that he wanted to shake hands with “every actor in the state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt”. This obviously refers not only to parliamentary groups, but also to members of parliament who could then be played off against each other in exploratory talks. The fact that this isn't particularly politically clean and is a breach of parliamentary conventions obviously doesn't bother anyone in the AfD.

It certainly doesn't bother Rausch, where many threads in the regional association now come together. So far he is known nationally above all for the fact that he even hired players from his football club as employees in his office - the accusation of fictitious employment is still in the air, and the AfD has never cleared it up. Rausch's three siblings also work for a party friend and AfD member of the Bundestag. Her daughter, in turn, works for the Saxony-Anhalt AfD parliamentary group - as does Rausch's partner, for a salary of around 6,000 euros. That's what you could read in many newspapers at the beginning of the year. With a possible AfD government, completely different positions await.

In the MDR group, apart from the AfD and a political scientist, the only possible tipping point is the Sarah Wagenknecht alliance. The CDU canceled the MDR round after its 17 percent debacle. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Sven Schulze, who is still in office, received at least some support from his own ranks on Tuesday - in the constitutive meeting of the new state parliamentary group on Tuesday he received 8 votes from the total of 15 MPs

You can tell that Rausch really wants the AfD government. He also does not rule out a minority government tolerating the CDU or BSW. “The CDU is definitely a partner for us, of course,” says Rausch – even though it is known that the AfD’s declared goal is to atomize the Union and take its place in the party structure in the long term.

But Rausch also loosens up on the BSW and even becomes specific: “Then we would say that internal security and the termination of the broadcasting state contract are important to us - if they want to keep the school social work, we will make the deal.” The loyal BSW top candidate Claudia Wittig replied: “We can get a wonderful budget together without having to join a coalition.” The AfD man replies: You could think about that if you first pass a paper that includes a committee for preliminary discussions. Putin certainly likes that.

The flirtation with the insecurity factor BSW also shows that Siegmund has promised his voters a nationalistic heaven on earth - the pressure to deliver is correspondingly high. It's just stupid: According to taz information, a few of the potential and planned CDU defectors to the AfD never even entered the state parliament. This can be heard from various sides of the extreme right-wing party. Now people are apparently looking at older and steadfast CDU MPs who are perhaps in their last term of office and would allow themselves to be lured with positions.

But there is also pressure from the party leadership: The important party strategist and mastermind Sebastian Münzenmaier told the taz on Tuesday: "Of course, with a result like this, we have a very clear government mandate. But we must not throw the content overboard." The best option now is to poach at least three people from the CDU or BSW, but Münzenmaier is convinced that secret support in the prime minister election could also help the AfD. And if all of this doesn't work, there would still be new elections. He expects the AfD to then get an absolute majority. In general, Münzenmaier now sees the Union under pressure: "If they reject our conversation, it will be even higher. I don't think the CDU can withstand this tearing process."

One of the biggest questions at the moment is: Who in the CDU wants to betray their own party and hold the stirrups for the clearly right-wing extremist AfD regional association? And mind you, even though the AfD and its milieu have been attacking CDU politicians personally and head-on for years.

AfD politicians spoke at Pegida demos, where CDU Chancellor Angela Merkel was symbolically hanged on the gallows. It was an AfD campaign worker who shot the Kassel district president Walter Lübcke. Ulrich Siegmund and Tino Chrupalla did not object when the “cabaret artist” Uwe Steimle recently asked the laughing AfD audience: “When I see Friedrich Merz, I sometimes ask myself: Where is Stauffenberg when you need him?” And sneering AfD factions are also the norm in almost all parliaments in Germany, when AfD MPs insult Christian democracies as “flat-nose pliers”, “traitors” and even “rats”.

The AfD's absolute desire to appoint a prime minister seems clear: And in fact, as the elected head of government, Siegmund could already appoint and have his cabinet sworn in and, if necessary, cause a ruckus with regulations even without a legislative majority. As has long been planned, he could cut off funding to unpopular clubs, hang up rainbow flags, change curricula, barrack refugees - and if that doesn't work, he would blame the opposition, the federal government, the EU and other scapegoats.

The AfD now has to convince at least three of the CDU “traitors” in order to appoint a prime minister. Because as AfD MP Felix Zietmann recently said in the state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt: "We only have to win once! You have to win every time!"