Merkel and the grand coalition

I've not yet commented on the German federal election that came out so close a "grand coalition" had to be formed for only the second time in post-war Germany. Most commentary on the right has been predictably bad with insinuations that socialist German voters are addicted to the state welfare system and hence somehow blinded into not fully supporting radical free-market economies based on the darwinian anglo-saxon model. Hence my previous example of the "socialist" German farmer who drives his Mercedes to the barn to store his state-subsidized potatoes for the winter because he's about to take a 6 week vacation, which is in some ways a reductio ad absurdum.

Here's the most recent example of Powertools commentary on the elections, which actually isn't half as bad as it could be--"three weeds" typo notwithstanding. One of the problems I have with most of this drivvel on our far-right is that they tend to equate the CDU with Republicans, which isn't necessarily quite accurate. Most German politics tends to start out slightly further to the left than US politics--an interesting point to ponder is that the party that draws most support from those whom the mainstream would describe as "neonazi" call themselves "Republikaner." Hence, the CDU is more similar to moderate democrats than to US Republicans. Another problem I've noticed is that commenters often see the position of chancellor as being more powerful than it is in reality. The parliamentary system is set up in a way that almost nothing can be decided in an authoritarian way by the chancellor, even though Schroeder seemed to exude more authority due to his charisma. Thirdly, a grand coalition really ain't so bad. Especially not if you're a free-market libertarian--like most conservative commentators are--who would usually advocate government paralysis as a solution to avoid excess spending and regulatory mismanagement. One has to wonder why are they so against this paralysis in Germany?

As for Merkel's reform agenda, she simply screwed up when she made the flat-tax a central theme in her campaign. Advocating that seems pretty silly considering that anti-tax US voters have been rejecting that idea for decades and it would have required an increase in the unpopular value-added tax, to 18% nonetheless! I believe voters probably forgave her for supporting Bush's Iraq adventure as being a purely political move from an opposition party to Gerhard Schroeder, but it probably was in the back of many voter's minds still. All-in-all, therefore, I'm actually looking forward to the two major parties coming together in a grand coalition. It'll certainly keep Merkel in check from going too far overboard on strange and extreme "reform agendas" and it'll force the social democrats to come back down to earth. Maybe Germans will like it so much that they'll vote to keep 'em in there longer!