SPD. Please. Alone, yes. But German politics is about coalitions. If there wasnt something called like "Auschließeritis" we would have a center left governement by now. I dont see how that's a mess. That it is just center-left and not batshitcrazy-left?
I agree what is surprising to me is that unlike in other European countries there is no strong right-wing movement or political party with any real voting base or electoral support.
1. history, there have been minor movements in the late 60ies, in the early 90ies and nowadays we have the NPD in two Eastern states parliaments, but they tend to die sooner or later, currently the Constitutional Court has to decide whether NPD will be forbidden for "unconstitionality" 2. political culture, all other parties consider themselves to be democrats, in a militant democracy they do everything to work together against nazis, nazi symbols are forbidden, e.g. you wont find swastikas in computer games: a nationwide grassroot movement is hard to develop there 3, the conservatives(CDU,CSU) are actually center parties, e.g they are far away from Britain's tories, who consider the indiviual the most important part in society, christian democrats act from a community and christian core values platform, FDP is a liberal party, that has developed into a pro-business/free market party, but it derives from political liberalism of the 19th century, during the Euro crisis a new minor party appeared: AfD got mainly votes from disappointed chr. democrats who think ther party has become to social-democrat under Merkel - you can find right-wingers more or less in all these three/four parties, they're just not organised in one movement. One of CDU/CSU credo's since the 50ies has been: "there must be no party right to us"
IMO there is no strong right wing party because of everybody guilt of the nazi era and the fear that a right wing party would be associated or labeled as fascist in nature. Because of that right wingers in my opinions are not in the political sphere but they manifest itself in the form of neo-nazi street violence or in the increasing public hostile attitude toward immigration or multiculturalism. I believe if a respectful face could be put on eurospcepticism, immigration control and nationalism a party like that could get a good 15 percent of the vote.
If I say nobody's feeling guilty that's not quite correct since I think elder people(+60) probably do(even if they were kids) but below that age I think nobody does. Germany has been through grand-societal discussions since the 60ies and esp. the younger have come to terms with the past. "Vergangenheitsbewältigung". They did because the "pressure" due the severeness of the crimes was big enough. The result is some kind of easyness but also awarness for the past. Other countries(Austria, Italy, Japan) never went through that process. That's why I think your theory doesnt work. For the 15%: the right-wing voters are caught and split by rightwing parts of the 4 parties I mentioned in the sectors of immigration and nationalism. AfD could probably win some votes since they're the only ones with an anti-euro agenda but that's not enough to get 15%.
Not advocating for a right wing party just thought it was strange that a large nation didn't have a viable right wing party. Other European counterparts have large right wing parties and they don't have the history Germany does. I
I'm certainly no expert in this area, but isn't it also the case that those who grew up in what was East Germany did not have their Vergangenheitsbewältigung? It was more of a "Those guys were Nazis, but we're Communists," as opposed to the more soul-searching view of those in West Germany, where people realized that almost everyone was part of the past. The other thing I noticed when I was there in September is that most (all?) of the political posters seem to be a head-shot of the candidate, their name and the party. Is there a law about that? Some of them may have had slogans, but not much else. And I thought the Pirate Party candidates looked much different than the typical suit-and-tie people from the other parties. Some had leather jackets, unconvenrional hair styles, much more casual clothing, and generally looked a lot more like regular people you might see walking down a street.
Yeah, there's some thruth to it. There was this guy in the end 50ies who found out that there were actually more former nazis in GDRs parliament then in Bundestag. When he made that public they put him into prison. East Germany nowdays is split into: the elder who grew up in socialism with some still holding and voting for extremist positions more far-left then far-right and the younger of 25 and below who are not different to their western counterparts. I dont quite know but you can put anything you want on a poster as long you dont insult anybody or have nazis symbols on it. What's probably different to the US is German parties structures are much stronger. Who gets a candidate in a district or on the party list is determined by caucuses. And the party pays for your campaign. This single candidate campaigns like in the US are only known from tv. So if youve become candidate both kinda limit the scope of what you can put on a poster. Another reason might be political culture: tv ad hell is unknown, local candidates are more or less unknown so that you remember their faces when you gp through the never ending voting lists, and it is unknown if these posters have any effect at all. The pirate party kinda played the anti-establishment card there.
I think campaign financing is the big differentiator there. In Germany, there are political TV ads, but they're few and far between. Actually, there might even be a law that restricts them, though I'm not sure about this. There is however a law that forces TV stations to allocate a certain amount of slots for political ads. According to Wikipedia, throughout the 2005 campaign, the two big parties had only 8 (!) spots each on public TV channels, while the smaller parties had between 2 and 4 ads. There were probably some more on private channels, but my guess is that there were even less of them, because there they have to pay more (although still much less than regular customers). Suffice it to say, TV ads are virtually nonexistent here. So campaigns still mainly take place in the streets. Mostly via posters next to the street. Given that people usually drive by those, the slogans obviously have to be short to nonexistent. The other channel is via volunteers who set up booths throughout the city centers and try to campaign there. When it comes to national elections all that is of course trumped by spin doctoring. Parties try to get their positions into all kinds of TV, Newspaper or Magazine formats which obviously doesn't cost much and is probably more effective than anything else. Local elections on the other hand are not important enough for that strategy to work out. Nowadays, of course all the parties also try to employ social media, but of course they're entirely incompetent when it comes to it, so that's still not much of a factor. Lastly, I think there also is a cultural difference. For one, my feeling is that Germans react rather negatively to negative campaigning. Gerhard Schröder was employing negative campaigning very successfully in 2005, but in the end he still lost and that is really the only major instance that I can remember where it actually worked. Also, I think as a whole, Germans are a more homogeneous group than Americans. I mean we also had the conservative vs. liberal divide in the past, but I would say that this has really decreased since the 1980s, the 1980 election being the last one with this kind of ideological warfare (now that I think about it, the 1980 campaign also very successfully employed negative campaigning by Helmut Schmidt who ended up winning, so maybe my previous point wasn't as valid as I first thought).
We used to have a law like that in the US too, the Fairness Doctrine, where equal time had to be given to opposing political parties. Ronald Reagan eliminated that, as well as the law that a corporation could not own more than one TV, AM and FM radio stations in the same market. Now you have the same corporation that owns 7-8 radio stations, so no matter what you like to listen to, it's one of their stations. Glad to see Germans don't go for negative campaigning in general. Canada, the country that is closest culturally to the US doesn't go for it too much either. There was the famous campaign about 10 years ago where one candidate for the Ontario Premiership, Ernie Eaves, called his opponent, Dalton McGuinty, an "evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet," McGuinty retorted that he liked both kittens and puppies, and that was it, Eaves lost the election.
Merkel standing up to the growing protests against immigrants and asylum seekers http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/30/merkel-germany-refugees_n_6398070.html?utm_hp_ref=world AfD turning its focus away from euroskepticism to anti-immigration platform I wonder how much support PEGIDA is getting in Germany interesting.
I would. And unless she's ousted by her own party, she'll continue for as long as she wishes. I'm starting to wonder if she deliberately tries to establish the AfD as a constant political force. That would make everything but a CDU/SPD coalition impossible for a long time to come. It weakens her party but ensures her power. Even more so if the FDP manages a to perform a come-back.
Yes anything else but a great coalition seems to be very unlikely in the future. Maybe Schwampel if things get really messed up. Can't see anything else happening to be honest.