printRichard Spencer of Taki’s: “It’s my view that Takimag readers should muster somewhere between 1.7 and 2.2 cheers for the Christian Democrats of Germany, who proved victorious this weekend in national elections. Their triumph not only secures a second chancellorship for Angela Merkel, but it will allow her to form a ruling coalition with the Free Democrats, who are much like the Club For Growth wing of the Republican Party.” …
“Though a decent and smart woman, Merkel is hardly a dynamic, risk-taking European politician in the line of Pim Fortuyn or Geert Wilders. … Though to her credit, over the past six months, she has issued forth some guarded grumblings about the Fed’s zero-interest-rate policies as well as Washington’s demand that countries with savings and trade surpluses finance Obama’s ‘stimulus’ orgy.”…
“It is certainly a good thing that after last fall’s economic downturn, Germans didn’t go running into the arms of the socialists and instead actually increased the vote totals of the ‘pro-business’ party (the FDP.) But let’s keep this in context. The Social Democrats—which is a kind of unionized, Joe Biden-like party, having dropped ‘gradualist’ Marxism—earned 23 percent of the vote; The Left Party—a breakaway from the SPD, which has picked up gradualist Marxism and looks back with fondness on the German Democratic Republic—received 12 percent; and the Greens—which combines the Baby Boomer New Left with pomo and crunchy insanities of many varieties—got 10. Put simply, half of the country either wanted some kind of retro-socialism (SPD, Left) or else a form of leftism that might actually be worse than what Obama is pursuing over here.”
The complete post is here.
I don’t share Richard Spencer’s kindly view of Angela Merkel and any comparison with Pim Fortuyn or Geert Wilders is preposterous. Four years ago she got my vote. I have been harshly disillusioned.
She couldn’t manage to form another coalition with her partner of choice, the Social Democrats, which is a good thing. However, I am not all that optimistic about the value of the Free Democrats either. They are the party most open to the Islamisation of Germany, partly because of their liberal understanding of society, partly, they define themselves as the party for the well-to-do and business people, because of the opportunities the trade with the Muslim countries offer.
Angela Merkel doesn’t deserve her second mandate, but got it for want of any alternative. Her party did so badly because Merkel managed to confine it to utter meaninglessness within the last four years.