Abhorred by intellectuals, but woman who shows common touch has won over Germany

London Telegraph ^ | 9/4/05 | Andrew Gimson

[Redmen4ever]

Angela Merkel is a genius who gets mistaken for a village idiot. Unless she suffers some completely unexpected disaster, she will in two weeks' time become the most powerful politician in Europe ...

[Redmen4ever]

Typical intellectual hatred of conservative, middle-class type people. They just can't understand that Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and, now, Angela Merkel succeed.

In the case of Merkel, a Ph.D. physicist who has mastered the political process, they call her an "idiot." I guess anybody who disagrees with a liberal must be an idiot. Yet how can these idiots do so well in politics (among other places).

The article is grudgingly admiring. I suppose, in the end, you have to recognize that anybody who can rise to become head of government of a nation as large and important as Germany has to have something going for her.

[rovenstinez]

Does she like George W.?

[radar101]

The correspondant took writing lessons from the Main Stream Media here in the U S, with emphasis on how to describe "W".

[Apercu]

Angela Merkel will be underestimated severely and succeed as did Mrs. Thatcher, Golda Meir, Ronaldus Maximus & GW Bush because she also has what all liberals are incapable of having or understanding and that is COMMON SENSE.

[MarkeyD]

She wants to do what she can to improve relations with the US,

[RoadTest]

Hoooooooooorrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[SegerSkriv]

I hope she gets elected and she is really the only hope for Germany.
Germany is at the bottom of the barrel in my mind with the stupid comments made about the New Orleans tragedy.
In a perfect world I would love to completely ignore Germany, but history dictates to us that somehow their increasing problems will end up in our lap.
She is East German too...so she has a bit more common sense than the West Germans.
We might finally see that not all Germans aren't bad.

[Archidamus]

"Unless she suffers some completely unexpected disaster, she will in two weeks' time become the most powerful politician in Europe by winning the German general election."

That would be welcome news indeed.

[ARCADIA]

The correspondant took writing lessons from the Main Stream Media here in the U S, with emphasis on how to describe "W".

I am waiting for them to call her a monkey; they may be saving that for the coming week.

[aBootes]

am waiting for them to call her a monkey; they may be saving that for the coming week.

Oh man. They won't call her a monkey -- she's a woman. But stand by for some in-depth reporting on her clothes, make-up, who and how her eyebrows are plucked, her shoe choices... All those things that indicate how well a woman thinks and leads.

[kublia khan]

Who's that i see fading into irrelavance, is that Mr. Chirac fading...fading...fading. No more shroeder to stand with you, Blair treats you like a side show and well you know what we think of you but the FC police wwon't let me say it.

[Wilhelm Tell]

"So I went to look at Mrs Merkel. On Wednesday I saw her speak in Karlsruhe, in south-west Germany, and on Thursday I watched her in Potsdam, just outside Berlin. On neither occasion did she look in the slightest bit lost. She looked and sounded like a woman who knows far better than her patronising male critics how Germany can be restored to health."

"Mrs Merkel has enjoyed the great advantage during her meteoric ascent of being grotesquely under-estimated."

I must be reading a different article than the one people are complaining about. If anything, the article makes Merkel's critics sound like sexist cads. She is tough and honest and just may be the German version of Margaret Thatcher.

[manwiththehands]

Can she fix my Audi?

[Archidamus]

"The Germans do not want to be ruled by a wit.

They are fed up with Mr Schröder's shameless attempts to charm himself out of trouble, and are ready to be governed by someone of substance, who dares to tell them the truth. In Mrs Merkel, the awkward-looking daughter of an East German clergyman, they appear to have found just such a person."

She sounds like a huge improvement over the present red/green gang.

[thucydides]

Well, from what I hear she's no Thatcher, but closer to a squishy "moderate." But by German standards, she seems conservative, and that is welcome.

[Rummyfan]

I don't know but she has to be better than Schroeder and Fischer.....

[SirJohnBarleycorn]

She really is the best we can hope for in the present policital environment in Germany, and the CDU/CSU are the closest thing they have to grown-ups among the realistic choices.

Let's all pray that the German people are granted sufficient sense to vote for her party and make her Chancellor, and that nothing happens between now and the election that would allow Schroeder to play the anti-American card and turn things around.

The Germans seem to love to buy into any kind of "the little guy is always getting shafted" demagoguery, which naturally plays into the hands of the reds and the greens, when it is the leftwing politicians who actually are doing the shafting to the little guy.

[dennisw]

[Gay State Conservative]

She is East German too...so she has a bit more common sense than the West Germans.

East Germans are in a much better position to understand filthy,repressive governments than are West Germans (at least the ones who weren't Stasi informants).

[dfwgator]

Erich Honneker would be better than Schroeder of Fischer.