Germany Redux

Last June, I said this

I did see/read some German coverage en route via coverage of planned early national elections in Germany. Schröder has only two things going for him in the upcoming election: the fact that he stood his ground against Bush especially in light of the Downing Street Memo and additional leaked information that the Germans take seriously, and the fact his rival (Angela Merkel, remember the name - she will be the next Chancellor) in the CDU party is relatively weak in that no plans/program ideas will be pulled together in time for early elections.

Well, I may have spoken too soon

Angela Merkel's bid to become Germany's first woman leader was dealt an embarrassing blow yesterday after her party was forced to admit that she virtually copied a speech given by the late Ronald Reagan during her recent TV duel with Chancellor Gerhard Schröder.

Of course, if the Busheviks have anything to say about it (can they interfere in Germany as they do elsewhere?), Merkel will win; that is if she can manage to continue to distance herself from the American Taliban

Despite some similarities in her policy proposals, she has studiously avoided being compared with the American right, fully aware that Mr Reagan and his Republican successors, with the exception of George Bush Snr, have been extremely unpopular figures in Germany.

Truthfully, she's quite the Bloodle, but with superior conservative German engineering [emphasis added]

Barring a few issues, notably entry to the EU, she smacks of Blairism. Yet scratch the conservative and you find a woman who appears to yearn for a lost age and defunct state. She is neither fish nor fowl. The most dangerous politicians are always the hybrids - the mermaids and centaurs. Germans will be offered an increasingly well-packaged modern conservative. But listen to the undertones, study her preference for polit-bureaucratic decision-making, and the true Angie emerges. She has been hardened in a different way from her western colleagues.

18 September will be an interesting day in Germany that may have some frightening world-wide implications.

Tags: Germany; politics; Angela Merkel; conservativism; Schröder

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