Jens Spahn, a senior member of Germany’s ruling conservatives, resigned on Saturday after having a baby born to a surrogate mother in the United States, a move at odds with his own party’s opposition to surrogacy, according to a letter seen by Reuters.
Spahn, 46, the parliamentary leader of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrat party and its sister Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU), drew heavy criticism after news emerged that he had become a parent with his husband through a surrogate mother…
Germany’s CDU questions Islam’s place in society – Muslims, migration, and nuclear energy all get fresh focus in a new CDU manifesto. The draft has already drawn widespread criticism.
The new color scheme a few months back was only a cosmetic step. Now, Germany’s center-right Christian Democrats are going under the hood. For the first time since 2007, the party that ruled Germany for most of the republic’s young history has revamped its party program.
Its leaders hope this is their ticket to returning to power, which they lost in 2021. In establishing what the CDU now stands for, the draft reflects ideological differences at the very top. Chairman Friedrich Merz needed three attempts to become party leader, rebuffed by a skeptical Angela Merkel when she was still chancellor and a powerful force in the party. With her gone and Merz in charge since early last year, he is seeking a different path…
Gone are the days of recognizing that “Islam now belongs to Germany, too” as the CDU’s Christian Wulff said when he served as Germany’s president during an early Merkel government. The new draft manifesto adds a key caveat: Muslims belong to Germany so long as they “share our values.”
They clearly want to increase the popularity of the far-right AfD (Alternative for Germany).
It has to be what they want. Otherwise they would propose aggressive measures against Germany’s “immigrant dystopia,” like the AfD is doing – and eating what used to be their lunch.
The “traffic light” coalition currently in power makes no secret about having no intention of doing anything about the migrant meltdown, but of course no one here even expects them to do anything (see the Banana Republic of US-Amerika for a similar situation near you).
German far-right party surges on immigrant ‘dystopia’ – Alternative for Germany is stoking anti-migrant sentiment in the town of Görlitz — and nationwide.
Nationally it (the AfD) is polling at nearly 22 per cent, ahead of all three parties in chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition: the Social Democrats, Greens and liberal Free Democrats.
Although “man” might be a little übertrieben (exaggerated) here.
They toss the manly-man types out on their ears here in Germany. Or Merkel does, I should say. You know, the popular ones? The ones the voters down below actually want? The swamp folk above do whatever she tells them to do. And that’s just what happened here.
Germany’s conservatives threw their weight on Tuesday behind Armin Laschet, a cautious centrist, as their candidate to succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor in a September national election instead of his more popular Bavarian rival.
Markus Soeder, leader of Bavaria’s Christian Social Union (CSU), conceded defeat in his week-long battle with Laschet, chairman of the larger Christian Democrats (CDU), to lead their alliance, dubbed ‘the Union’, into the Sept. 26 election.
“The die is cast – Armin Laschet will be the Union’s candidate for chancellor.”
The other two candidates competing for the job of CDU party boss had actually stood up to her in the past. They never had a chance.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right party on Saturday chose Armin Laschet, the pragmatic governor of Germany’s most populous state, as its new leader — sending a signal of continuity months before an election in which voters will decide who becomes the new chancellor.
Laschet defeated Friedrich Merz, a conservative and one-time Merkel rival, at an online convention of the Christian Democratic Union. Laschet won 521 votes to Merz’s 466. A third candidate, prominent lawmaker Norbert Roettgen, was eliminated in a first round of voting.
But who am I to criticize how other countries run their elections? I am a citizen of the Banana Republic of America.
We spell it gross. That means big. Not gross. You know, our gross, as in “a gross exaggeration?”
That’s what’s calling Friedrich Merz “Germany’s Donald Trump” certainly is. A “hardline conservative” in Germany is a liberal light in US-Amerika.
But having said that, when I read from our friends over at Politico about “A combative old white man who speaks of gays and pedophiles in the same breath, dismisses gender debates as a waste of time and who can’t stand Angela Merkel could hardly be more out of step with the zeitgeist,” I ask myself, what’s not to like about this guy?
Of replacing Angela Merkel as the chairman of the conservative CDU, I mean.
1) Because Merkel doesn’t like him and forced him out of politics ten years ago, 2) he’s pro-business (and that’s a bad thing to be in German politics) and 3) he represents the conservative wing of a conservative party that stopped being conservative long ago. What’s the difference between the CDU and the SPD – or the Greens, for that matter?
I sure do wish this guy a lot of luck, though.
A former rival of Chancellor Angela Merkel who seeks to replace her at the helm of Germany’s conservative party said Wednesday he would aim to renew the party and establish close ties with Western democracies but wouldn’t push for a radical overturn of current policies.
Friedrich Merz, a corporate lawyer and former parliamentary floor leader of Ms. Merkel’s conservatives, said he could get along with the chancellor despite previous clashes that led to his gradual exit from politics nearly 10 years ago. A good working relationship with the chancellor would be crucial to ensure party backing for the ruling coalition’s political agenda.
“We need an awakening and renewal but not an overturn.”
No, not the Frank Zappa record. If you’ve ever wondered why folks on the left freak out the way they do you really out to read this.
And if you happen to do German, pick this up sometime.
He and his colleagues Brian Nosek and Jesse Graham sought to discover how well conservative and what Haidt terms ‘liberal’ (ie: progressive) students understood one another by having them answer moral questions as they thought their political opponents would answer them. “The results were clear and consistent,” remarks Haidt. “In all analyses, conservatives were more accurate than liberals.” Asked to think the way a liberal thinks, conservatives answered moral questions just as the liberal would answer them, but liberal students were unable to do the reverse. Rather, they seemed to put moral ideas into the mouths of conservatives that they don’t hold. To put it bluntly, Haidt and his colleagues found that progressives don’t understand conservatives the way conservatives understand progressives.
Brain Quest – A Fantastic Voyage through the Progressive Mind. Out now!
“Other than a slight run-in with an errant gang of deviant subculture corpuscles our passage through the blameless victim ventricle proved to be rather uneventful.”
Observing Hermann 