Stora tråden om Angela Merkel [mod]

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Germany, INSA poll:

Should there be a snap election?

In favour: 47%
Oppose: 29%

After a snap election Chancellor Merkel should be...

Re-elected as chancellor: 24%
Not be chancellor anymore: 56%

Field work: N/A
Sample size: N/A
Published: 20/09/18
#Merkel #Germany

Prepare for Merkeldämmerung.

Germany’s chancellor suffered a major blow Tuesday when her center-right bloc rejected her handpicked choice to lead its parliamentary group, an affront that one German commentator described as nothing less than a “political bomb.”

The news that Volker Kauder, a close Merkel ally who has run the parliamentary group for 13 years, lost in a secret ballot to challenger Ralph Brinkhaus, his deputy, sent shockwaves through political circles in the German capital.

Most observers were convinced Kauder, with the support of Merkel and other party leaders, would easily beat Brinkhaus, who has virtually no public profile. Brinkhaus, who witnesses described as surprised by his own victory, received 125 votes to Kauder’s 112.

Before the vote, Merkel made a personal plea to the group at a meeting in the historic Reichstag building, telling members that she considers Kauder to be crucial to the stability of her coalition government. By selecting Brinkhaus against Merkel’s wishes immediately following her remarks, conservative MPs left no doubt that they are dissatisfied with the chancellor’s stewardship.

Totalt, tysk asylkaos: Politiet eftersøger 450.000 udlændinge

Regerings- og Forbundsministeriet er under stigende pres – grund: fuldstændig fiasko. I Tyskland søger politiet i øjeblikket i alt 643.000 mennesker, herunder cirka 450.000 udlændinge. På anmodning fra AFD’s parlamentariske gruppe har forbundsregeringen ikke benægtet disse tal.

Den administrerende direktør for AFDs parlamentariske gruppe, Jürgen Braun, forklarer: “Dette er et udtryk for en total overbelastning af sikkerhedsmyndighederne. Vores land lider under virkningerne af en planlagt og uansvarlig åbning af grænsen. “

De 450.000 udlændinge står enten til at arrestation, deportation eller til efterforskning af opholdsgrund – dette er forsigtige minimumskøn af sikkerhedseksperter. Jürgen Braun siger: “Hundredusinder af udlændinge er afveget. Ingen ved hvor de er. Hvis bare få af dem slår sig sammen i grupper, som nytårsaften i Köln, er det umuligt at styre dem med en almindelig politistyrke. “

Ved den såkaldte “deadline” den 1. september 2017 blev 280.000 udlændinge allerede forsøgt anholdt. Det var en stigning på omkring 140 procent i forhold til året før. I september 2018 er det øget med nu næsten 300 procent.

Germany's coalition government announced in the early hours of Tuesday that they had agreed on new immigration laws after several months of back and forth over immigration policy. The new laws will be inspired by the oft-touted Canada model, and would make it more difficult for the poor and uneducated to immigrate to Germany, according to a draft of the deal seen by journalists.

...

The outline of the proposed law states, however, that non-EU citizens without higher education or, preferably, a concrete job offer, will not be able to live in Germany: "We do not want any immigration from unqualified third-country nationals," the deal states.
Like the Canada model, prospective immigrants would be ranked according to level of education, age, language skills, job offers, and "financial security."

Such a result would create national ructions whose outcome would depend on coalition negotiations, but may actually help Merkel in the short term. The CSU's failure could lead to Seehofer's resignation from Merkel's government, and conceivably Söder's exit from the Bavarian state premiership, which would remove two of the chancellor's most outspoken critics from power, and give her room to govern in the calmer, crisis-free manner she is accustomed to.

On the other hand, a heavy loss and big resignations in the CSU might well push a desperate party in a more volatile, abrasive direction at the national level. That would further antagonize the SPD, the center-left junior partners in Merkel's coalition, themselves desperate for a new direction and already impatient with Seehofer's destabilizing antics, and precipitate a break-up of the age-old CDU/CSU alliance, and therefore a break-up of Merkel's grand coalition. In short: Anything could happen after Sunday, up to and including Merkel's fall.

The CSU's dominance in Bavaria was in the innocent days before the AfD had left an inerasable mark on Germany, and a shift in the whole political debate that has created a seemingly irreversible flattening out and broadening of the political landscape.

The untranslatable term "Volksparteien" (literally, "people's parties"), referring to the two big central parties, the CDU/CSU and SPD, once meant that the two parties enjoyed an appeal across various social classes, and reflected their status as the keepers of German stability.

But the latest opinion polls suggest the word is obsolete now, and its relevance has been crumbling for a while. In fact, you'd have to go back to Merkel's first election victory in 2005, when the CDU claimed 35 percent of the vote, and the SPD 34 percent, for the last time that the two major parties could still claim to represent a clear majority of the German population.

Nowhere is the decline of the Volksparteien more obvious than Bavaria, possibly the state that most embodies German power and tradition for international Germanophiles: This is the state of auto giants like BMW, of European football titans Bayern Munich, of splendors like King Ludwig's Wagner-inspired fairytale castle Neuschwanstein.

That speculation, which is reflected in this week's Bavarian opinion polls, chimes with the new political frontlines that have developed across Europe, and arguably in the US, in the last couple of years: the confrontation between progressive identity politics that demands equality and inclusion for previously marginalized social groups, and regressive identity politics that is trying to protect the privilege of the old white Christian order. Sunday's election could be the moment when this new constellation finally becomes visible in parliament.

Many people thought Bavaria’s election would be a backlash against the hundreds of thousands of migrants Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed into Germany three years ago. It turned out to be a backlash against Ms. Merkel herself.

Voters on both the left and the right are saying it is time for her and her government to go.

BERLIN — Call it the chaos before the storm.

After Germany’s ruling parties suffered losses in Bavaria’s state election that were as humiliating as they were historic, the country’s political leaders were mired in the kind of finger-pointing and dissembling that has sent voters running from the political center.

Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats blamed their Bavarian ally, the Christian Social Union, which blamed the chancellor’s “grand coalition” in Berlin (to which the Bavarian conservatives themselves belong). The Social Democrats, who saw their share of the Bavarian vote cut in half, blamed themselves, the CSU, God and the world, in no particular order.

Polls suggest the CDU could lose as much as a quarter of its support. Though the SPD is in opposition in the state, it too is expected to suffer considerable losses of as much as 20 percent. Both the Greens and the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) are forecast to post strong gains.

The risks for Merkel are two-fold.

While the chancellor’s surrogates can shift blame for Sunday’s loss to the CSU (the CDU isn’t active in Bavaria, after all), that won’t be possible in Hesse. The CDU candidate, Volker Bouffier, is a Merkel man who has stuck with her through thick and thin. In other words, Bouffier’s loss would be Merkel’s loss. That could force Merkel to relinquish her chairmanship of the CDU, a step she has long resisted.

The second problem is the SPD. If the SPD’s slow-burn implosion continues in Hesse, the party’s willingness to stick with the grand coalition, already at a low ebb, could evaporate.

If the SPD abandons the coalition, Merkel could try to build an alliance with the Greens and Free Democrats, a combination that failed to materialize despite long negotiations after last year’s general election.

More likely is that Merkel would be forced to pursue a minority government and try to limp along for a while before calling a new general election, an inauspicious end to her long tenure.