Markus Söder's Political Ash Wednesday Rally Overshadowed by Family Drama
As a cabaret artist, Herbert Kickl could learn a thing or two from Markus Söder. The Bavarian minister-president—a true master of transformation—often cuts a dazzling figure on stage. At Carnival in his Franconian hometown of Veitshöchheim, he has delighted crowds with impersonations of Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe, Moses and Gandhi, a punk rocker and Bavaria's King Luitpold, Otto von Bismarck—and, as the grand finale—Edmund Stoiber.
The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on
This year, Söder had his face painted in wartime colors of white and blue, Bavaria's state hues. With long, flowing hair and a kilt, he channeled Braveheart, the Scottish freedom fighter William Wallace—raising the question of whether he might take up arms against his own coalition in Berlin, led by party colleague Friedrich Merz.
Yet Söder's biggest stage—and a home game at that—is the CSU's Political Ash Wednesday rally in Passau. The original event, which inspired the FPÖ's copycat version in Ried, is essentially Carnival by other means. This year, it served as a dress rehearsal ahead of the CDU party conference in Stuttgart. Söder had to pull out all the stops—not least to drown out the furor over his daughter Gloria-Sophie's romance with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. The Bavarian lion roared and bellowed, the dogs barked, but the caravan moves on. That's how Helmut Kohl handled Franz Josef Strauß's bluster, and it's how Christian "Churchill" Stocker deals with Herbert Kickl's barbs—all that "fanfare and humbug."
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