FDP Leader Christian Lindner Refuses Cooperation with AfD, but Aims to Win Over Moderates
Lindner, the leader of the Free Democratic Party (FDP), has ruled out any cooperation with the Alternative for Germany (AfD), but he wants to win over the party’s moderate voters. “I will not tear down the wall”he told the Funke Media Group newspapers, “but I differentiate between the moderate protest voters of the AfD and the hard core and the party itself. With the Nazi club, one will not win back voters from there. That has expired.”
His approach, he said, is to “present a really different migration and security policy and to show that the AfD is anti-business.”The AfD’s pension policy would cause contributions to explode to 25 percent and the exit from the EU would disconnect Germany from its most important market. The AfD’s program “ruins our economy.”
However, Lindner rejects a ban on the AfD. “The confrontation must be political. The hurdle for a ban is very high”he said. “If the ban application in Karlsruhe fails, the AfD would essentially get a clean slate.