"Und if she doesn't verk out, ve can alvays try again."
Posted on 09/13/2005 10:34:17 AM PDT by lowbuck
The country is in trouble. Unemployment is high, the economy seems to be locked in a long, slow decline, and there is widespread unrest, especially in the depressed areas. Things have to change, a fact that most citizens acknowledge, but who's going to make those changes happen? Reckoning on the popularity of the man in charge and the mixed public attitude towards the female leader of the opposition, the governing party has decided that its only real chance is to call elections earlier than expected. With elections fast approaching, however, it looks like it may have made a big mistake.
Sound familiar? It should. It's a concise description of the choice facing Germany this Sunday as the country votes between an unpopular government run by Social Democratic Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and the only slightly more palatable prospect of a government run by his Christian Democrat (CDU) challenger Angela Merkel.
But the above scenario should sound doubly familiar. After all, just over a quarter century ago, Great Britain -- facing problems perhaps even more intractable than those now facing Germany -- opted for "tough love" and elected Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher for what turned out to be an 11 year stint as the country's first female prime minister.
(Excerpt) Read more at service.spiegel.de ...
Angela Merkel is a hard-core, free market, down-with-socialism conservative. Additionally, being from East Germany, she is forever thankful to the USA for freeing her East German countrymen from under the Soviet boot. Truly she's very close to Margaret Thatcher.
Germany's about to become a far greater ally to the USA than it ever was to France. It'll suck to be French when that happens.
As much as I despise the current idiot leadership of Germany, I feel bad for them. I lived there for three years while in the military. The people of the small cow town in Bavaria that I lived in were wonderful, Godly, down to earth, folksy people. They were always good to me and my family.
FYI..must read...
Norway's election just moved their government to the left.
Norway is not EU member, and has big oil wealth.
More properly, not enough of the right people in the electorate are. The young people looking for jobs, yes. The middle-aged ones who have them and have generous benefits and cushy upcoming retirements, probably not. The ones comfortably on the dole and unwilling to change that, certainly not.
I could be wrong, of course. The high art of practical politics is to convince a majority to sacrifice in the name of the common good. That takes a tough, stubborn politician who is willing to take the heat and, in a parliamentarian system, a party backing that is unwavering. Thatcher had both.
nice post - thanks
Hey, lowbuck.... I was born in Heidi landt....Oberammergau. My mums from Berlin, but her whole family planted themselves in and around GAP after the war. Some of my cousins are moderate to conservative and the rest are just generally ill-informed. I often feel like I have to go through reeducation with them while visiting, just to explain the idiotic news they receive about events in the US. It's also astounding that while most of my cousins are University educated, none have computers with email at home yet.
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