The media today are raving over Angela Merkel’s “huge victory“, with some even calling it “historic” or even a “blowout”, as Drudge does.
But this isn’t so by any means. Merkel’s government LOST and will soon no longer be in power. The perception of media outlets from Great Britain and in the USA surely has been distorted by a dense fog across the English Channel and the Atlantic. Merkel’s government was defeated. Her current government failed to get the votes needed to continue.
Somewhere along the line Merkel forgot that her government was a team effort and involved other team players. Although her party scored lots of goals and made spectacular plays that wowed the viewers, her team lost. She is the MVP, but on the losing team.
Typical of Merkel: when the going gets tough, she abandons her partners, throws them under the bus, but not without first giving them a swift, hard kick to the face. Had Merkel’s CDU/CSU party received a scant half a percent of the vote less and her junior FDP a scant half a percent more, her government would be sitting firmly in power today. But no, Merkel and her players insisted on being stars and abandoned their team mates. This is going to come back around soon enough.
We saw the same pattern when she ditched Germany’s nuclear power in the wake of Fukushima, and later when she brutally threw Federal Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen under the bus after his disastrous CDU election defeat in North Rhine-Westphalia. Immediately Röttgen resigned his position as head of the CDU in North Rhine-Westphalia and on 16 May 2012 he was fired by Merkel and replaced by Peter Altmaier as the Federal Minister for Environment.
So in the aftermath of yesterday’s elections, what’s left is superstar Merkel on a defeated team searching for a new coalition partner. Now it’s her turn to beg.
Merkel’s CDU/CSU party only has two options: 1) form a coalition with rival socialist SPD party, or 2) try to forge a coalition with the hostile Greens.
Should the runner-up SPD party agree to form a coalition with Merkel’s CDU/CSU, then look for such a government that will try to force through the “Energiewende” (transition to renewables) with renewed vigor. Her previous liberal, business-friendly FDP party was the only element in German politics who to some extent applied the emergency brakes on the out of control renewable energy subsidies and feed-in tariffs. An SPD coalition partner will surely let up on the brakes, if not completely abandon them. A huge, almost two thirds majority CDU/SPD government would practically allow them to ram through any energy policy desired.
Should the Greens agree to form a coalition with Merkel’s party, a very unlikely scenario, but not one that can be excluded with the opportunistic Merkel, then the Energiewende gas pedal would surely get pushed to the metal.
With the FDP liberal coalition partner gone and licking its wounds, there is nothing left (except a fleeting chance to some rationality) in place to slow down the Energiewende and climate policy.
There is one other remaining possibility: both the Greens and SPD will refuse to form a coalition with Merkel’s conservatives. That would leave superstar Merkel without a team to lead, and wishing she had not thown the FDP under the wheels.
So tell me who’s holding all the cards? Like Steinbrück said, “the ball is in her hands.” If I were the SPD, I’d play serious hardball.
With German election over, the wipeout begins; in Italy, at Monte Paschi.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-09-23/it-begins-monte-paschi-bails-bondholders-halts-650-million-coupon-payments
spd and greens are holdung the cards. not a good situation for mrs. merkel.
ike
If the FpD had got their 5% would that have givern Merkel other options ?
Yes; simple continuation of what she did. As Beatrix von Storch from the AfD noted, FDP purged all Euroskeptic delegates from its list for this election so it would have been very smooth sailing for Merkel. I saw no point in voting for FDP under these circumstances. Maybe the CDU demanded the purge. Well that was that for the FDP.
[…] we uit Berlijn misschien toch even niets te verwachten op het gebied van climate easing. Het is Pierre Gosselin die scherpzinning opmerkt dat Merkel als regeringsleider in feite de verkiezingen verloren heeft. Haar regering is gevallen. […]
The big players in the DIHK have already been migrating production capacity (therefore jobs) to somewhere outside the walls of the asylum. With the SPD probably insisting on a minimum wage policy as a condition for coalition, it will become unfeasible for many small, medium and large companies to employ some labour at rates that are justifiable by that minimum.
Low-income earners will lose jobs and become increasingly dependent upon social handouts because they cannot lawfully earn a supplementary income. The tax base will have to be “broadened” … i.e. the government will increase taxes and invent new ones.
Not only will unemployment increase, but productivity will fall as those minor jobs currently being done by the supplememntary wage earners will either have to be done by those directly engaged in production or they will be left undone until they become a show-stopper for production. Both approaches have immediate impact on quality, corporate morale and public image.
When the big producers, having moved factories to e.g. Poland, no longer buy supplies and services from their former smaller suppliers that are left behind in Germany, the whole industrialised base rapidly collapses.
Meanwhile, the savings and pension funds of ordinary people will receive regular “haircuts” to bail out foreign banks; the German banks having to do the bidding of a foreign, unaccountable regulator in the EU.
Tell me that that’s not planned.