DER SPIEGEL Suche öffnen Fall from Grace Merkel's Conservatives Mired in Scandal and Incompetence Shameless deals for medical equipment, dubious foreign contacts and corona crisis mismanagement: Angela Merkel's conservatives are in bad shape as the election campaign looms. How did they lose their way? Link kopieren Armin Laschet, the newly anointed head of Germany's Christian Democratic Union (CDU), has been a politician for two-and-a-half decades. He knows how difficult it can be, and how quickly things can change. But even he might be getting a bit dizzy these days. Not even two months have passed since he was elected head of the country's largest, most powerful political party, essentially transforming him into the chancellor-in-waiting and designated successor to Chancellor Angela Merkel. What could possibly go wrong? After all, the coronavirus vaccines had arrived, signaling a path out of the pandemic. It looked like it would be a good year for him and the CDU.