Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the head of Germany's ruling Christian Democratic Union party and Chancellor Angela Merkel's designated successor to lead Germany, unexpectedly stepped down as party leader Monday and said she won't seek the chancellorship in next year's election. Kramp-Karrenbauer, a CDU moderate in Merkel's mold, will remain defense minister and stay on as party general secretary until the CDU choose her replacement this summer.
Kramp-Karrenbauer's departure is seen as tied to a fracture in the party thrown into relief in regional elections last week in the eastern state of Thuringia. Some local CDU lawmakers, bucking the national party, voted with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) to elect a far-left leader, who then resigned to rid his election of the stain of AfD involvement. Voting with extremist parties like the AfD is taboo in Germany, and any shift to the right in the CDU would alienate the party's junior coalition partner, the center-left Social Democrats.
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