The German Election

The recent German elections gave a double win to Germany’s real conservative party, Alternative fur Deutschland (AFD).  While the top vote-winner was the establishment conservative CDU? CSU, AFD came in a strong second.  That means it will now be the official opposition in the Bundestag, which gives it a powerful “bully pulpit.”

There is more to AFD’s strong showing than that.  An article in the February 27 Wall Street Journal wrote of

The AFD’s stellar performance at the ballot, where it doubled its share of the votes, scored the biggest gains of all parties, and finished first in many socio-economic groups, including taxpayers, voters under 50 and blue-collar workers. . . The AFD tripled its vote share among voters aged 18-24. . . (and) doubled its share among voters aged 25-44. . .

In contrast, the CDU/CCSU had its third-worst performance since 1949, while AFD broke out of its Festung Ost and placed first in a number of areas in the former West Germany.

But there is a second victory for AFD, one that will play out on a daily basis until the next elections.  The fact that the CDU/CSU placed first and AFD second shows that a majority of Germans want a government on the right.  Creating one is easy: a coalition of the CDU/CSU and AFD would have a comfortable majority, one that would enable the government to take bold actions.  But the “conservative” CDU/CSU has been so captured by cultural Marxism that has ruled such a coalition out.  Instead, it is seeking a coalition with the Socialist SPD, which took a severe beating and came in only a distant third.  A CDU/CSU/SPD coalition will have only a slender majority in the Bundestag, which will limit its ability to act with boldness.

Worse is the fact that the CDU/CSU and the SPD agree on very little. Germany faces three big problems, all of which demand urgent and strong action.  First, the export-driven economy is faltering badly, with Germany in a recession and companies shedding jobs.  Second, the country is overrun with immigrants who will not acculturate because most of them are Muslims and Germany has a Christian/secular culture which is incompatible with Islam.  German women don’t want to have to choose between wearing a black bag or getting raped.  Third, the German military has shrunk to little more than a palace guard at the same time than the country’s infrastructure is failing.  Both problems require a lot of money to address.

While a CDU/CSU coalition with the AFD could effectively act on all these problems, a CDU/CSU/SPD government will not be able to tackle any of them with more than token gestures.  The SPD wants open borders, sees more generous welfare as the solution to the loss of manufacturing jobs and, while it backs infrastructure spending, is lukewarm on more money for the military.  Its priority is the welfare state, and that must be the priority of the new government as a whole because its margin in the Bundestag will be slight.  Until the next federal elections, the SPD tail will wag the CDU/CSU dog.

‘ The result will be a general failure to govern.  As the official opposition, the AFD can and will point to that failure day in and day out.  Not that it will need to: Germans will see the results of a failure to govern all around them in a declining economy, mounting joblessness, more mass murders by Islamist immigrants and a foreign policy that costs Germany markets for its exports.  By the time the next elections roll around, AFD’s message will be, “It’s us or more of the same.” Since no other party will go into coalition with AFD, Germans tired of mounting failures will hae no choice but to give AFD outright majority.  At that point, Germany will have a new politics.

So do Germans just have to suffer before new elections come?  Maybe not.  It would not take many defections from the CDU/CSU to permit a majority coalition with the AFD.  That could start with the whole CSU, which is more conservative than the CDU.  Many CDU delegates know an ineffective coalition with the SPD will cost them their seats the next time Germans vote.  Politicians like to stay in office.  If the CSU leads the way by joining the AFD en bloc, I suspect enough CDU delegates will make the individual choice to switch rather than lose their seats.  Germans would then get the government they voted for, an AFD/CSU/CDU coalition, minus only Herr Merz, who will join Herr Scholz and Frau Merkel in history’s wastebasket.  That would be real democracy in Germany.