Riots in a refugee center this week allowed the new interior minister, whose portfolio includes the "homeland" brief, to take a tough stand on asylum seekers. But polls show that it's not helping his party.

Diversity is a wonderful thing.

"It is a slap in the face of the law-abiding populace," was how Germany's interior minister, Horst Seehofer, described events in a small town in central Germany this week. "An outrageous situation," that should have severe consequences, he added.

He was referring to events at a refugee center in Ellwangen, a town in the state of Baden-Württemberg. More than a hundred asylum seekers at the center blocked police efforts on Monday to take a Togolese man into custody for deportation. The police had to come back on Thursday in force – at least a hundred officers – and got their man.

The situation gave Mr. Seehofer yet another opportunity to demonstrate his hard line on "heimat" – the German word for homeland, or home, which has recently joined kindergarten and schadenfreude in the English vocabulary. In fact, the country's interior ministry was recently rechristened to encompass the emotive notion of heimat, and the conservative Mr. Seehofer, now the head of a super-ministry that is supposed to combine heimat with domestic security, law enforcement and housing, has lost no time in defining his version of it.

A slap in the face of the law-abiding populace. Horst Seehofer, German interior minister

Mr. Seehofer has already spoken about his plan for any further influx of refugees. He wants to collect those asylum-seekers who are waiting to see whether they can stay in Germany or not in so-called “anchor centers.” His critics have said this is just a euphemism for concentration camps.

And they have also quickly pointed out that the resistance at the Ellwangen center, home to only 500 refugees, could mean even more trouble at an anchor center, which might hold three times as many asylum-seekers.

Mr. Seehofer clearly relishes any opportunity to talk tough on heimat. He is also the chairman of the conservative Christian Social Union, or CSU, the Bavarian sister party of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, or CDU. Mr. Seehofer had to cede his position as Bavarian prime minister following the party’s poor performance in September’s national elections.

The CSU lost support because a long partnership with the more centrist CDU has seen some of their conservative credentials dissipate. That ground has been ceded to the further-right and anti-immigration Alternative for Germany, or AfD. The refugee crisis of 2015 made the CSU vulnerable on its right flank for the first time in postwar history. But with state elections coming in Bavaria this fall, the party is working hard to reclaim that conservative territory. Mr. Seehofer’s successor as state prime minister, Markus Söder, drew international attention last month with a new edict that government buildings must display a Christian cross.

In a long opinion piece for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung last month, Mr. Seehofer tried to maintain that heimat is inclusive and based on diversity. At the same time, he blamed globalization for diluting the control national governments have. “Neo-liberal thinking must be replaced by ordo-liberal action - and that begins with the appreciation of a visible and tangible state,” Mr. Seehofer declared. He referred implicitly to Germany’s particular brand of “ordoliberalism,” which counts on the state to create the framework for a social market economy.

Thing is, neither Mr. Seehofer's talk of heimat nor his calls for anchor centers, nor Mr. Söder's enthusiasim for religious icons, seems to be appealing to voters. Late last month, pollsters had the CSU getting 44 percent of Bavaria's vote in state elections. This weekend, new surveys show they would only get 41 percent, which still makes them the most popular party but also means they would need to form a coalition to govern in their home state. Meanwhile the AfD, which has gained most of its new supporters from the ranks of former CSU fans, gained another 2 percentage points.

The question now is how much further right will Mr. Seehofer go, riots in refugee homes not withstanding, if his current shift is not achieving the desired results? Maybe he would be better off focusing on the national housing market - another important aspect of the heimat ministry - and the extra money, around €400 million in this year's budget, that the German government is promising to families with children who build or buy their own homes.

Handelsblatt reporters Silke Kersting and Moritz Koch contributed to this article. Darrell Delamaide is a writer and editor for Handelsblatt Global in Washington, DC. To contact the author: [email protected]