Is there any political precedent in Germany for removing her from office before 2017?
There are probably three scenarios.
1. Two state elections occur in Oct/Nov of this year....both in eastern side of the country. If her party did really bad (less than 20-percent in either) then the party might ask her to go ahead and resign.
2. Three state elections in the spring of 2017...same deal as above.
3. There is this deal between the EU and Turkey...where the EU pays off Turkey 3 billion Euro and gives them some free visas, and Turkey agrees to ‘hold back’ the refugee crowd. For about six weeks, it seems to have worked. The EU however, has decided this free visa deal with Turkey will have to have some mandatory requirements....which upset Turkey greatly. If you noticed the news from last week...the Turk foreign minister resigned. There’s some belief that Turkey is about to drop this ‘hold back’ the refugee crowd, and if so....then we go back to 100,000 folks crossing the Med and heading to Germany. Public opinion is barely happy right now...but if we go back to 100,000 a month...it’ll be a major failure for Merkel and I think she’d have to resign.
On the whole, I don’t think a new person will really be fixing this because it’ll still end up being someone who can’t close the door on asylum, immigration or improve integration.
There is such a large divide with the public, and the state-run news media is extremely multi-culty and pro-asylum. They drive the message each day back toward the public. I think the 2017 election will just go to pro-immigration, and by 2021...that election will see some really hostile voters in the majority...with them wanting to dump the state-run news media and TV tax along with the refugee problem.
Toss in a Trump presidency which disturbs the state-run news media here, and you have a charged up period for the next five to ten years.