More German Bits

Roland Koch (see previous post) really tries hard to prevent a Grand Coalition and trigger new elections: after the idea of shared (2 years one party leader, 2 years the other) chancellorship was floated, he declared that the CDU/CSU should insist on the SPD dropping Schröder as a precondition.

One thing I forgot to insert into the previous post was that Koch, not Merkel, enjoys the US neocon's support. This they made painfully clear after Iraq's invasion. Merkel licked neocon arse with her foreign policy statements ever since summer 2002, and she long sought public contact with US counterparts, yet in May 2003, Merkel was only granted a meeting with Powell when the latter visited Berlin - while Koch was received for an unscheduled 15-minute meeting at the White House...

I also forgot to express Schadenfreude at how that utter idiot leading the FDP, Guido Westerwelle, fared: the guy who shares much of the blame for turning the FDP an unserious no-holds-barred-neoliberal 'fun' party is a direct candidate in Bonn, and this time got only 8.7% - that's 5.5% less than in 2002, and 5% less than list votes for his party in Bonn!...