The survey found that 32% of eligible voters believe Germany has worsened since Merz took office in May, while just 22% say the country has improved. A further 37% perceive no change at all.
The survey found that 32% of eligible voters believe Germany has worsened since Merz took office in May, while just 22% say the country has improved. A further 37% perceive no change at all.
I’m not from Germany, so what could I know, but Scholz looked extremely indecisive. Did he make any decisions at all? In comparison to Scholz, any chancellor would appear like a crazy reformator. And people mostly dislike reforms.
Merz does exactly what has been happening for the last 20 years, except maybe for Scholz’s brief interlude: Axing social systems and handing money to the so-called elites. If anyone spooked the people with reforms, it was Scholz’s government. I very deliberately say his government because his ministers did all the work while he, as you said, mainly stood around trying to act “besonnen”.
well he might have thought: “Well it worked for Merkel, why not for me too?”
20 years? Did you forget Hartz 4 by Schröder and the Greens?
No, this has been going on for a lot longer.
Merz is the very opposite of a reformator.
That would be a “deformator”, I guess.
Don’t let that fool you. Scholz’ measured attitude may make him seem passive, but his government was very active in terms of reform. Merz talks a big game, but the main contributions of his government are to revert changes from the previous ones, while also raking up massive debt to support his budget (something that he has actively campaigned against and blocked during Scholz’ tenure).
Nah, the thing with Merz is that he more-or-less transparently lied during the campaign, brought in multiple lobbyists as minister, brought in multiple politicians with previous corruption scandals as minister/party whip and now these people are behaving exactly as you think they would. They’re trying to do Trump light, and unfortunately they’re not totally unsuccessful in that.
Externally, Merz is making pointlessly macho announcements to other countries (and is then often not following up, e.g. along with Macron, he gave an ultimatum for a ceasefire to Putin … which just passed and was never heard of again). Domestically, Merz continues verbally beating up the poorest while investigating tax cuts for the richest. Dobrindt is making inhumanity and inefficiency at the border cool again, in the process fucking up relations to neighboring countries like Poland. Reiche is evaluating how to fuck solar and wind power to be able to import more fossil gas. Schnieder is investigating how to fuck the cheap-ish national train ticket while making fossil-powered cars and flights cheaper. Now-party whip Spahn, whose corruption led to somewhere between 2.5 and 10bn€ being lost on FFP2 masks since 2021, is tirelessly repeating that he is being prosecuted for nothing and feels zero guilt. And in the past few days, the CxU parliamentary group prevented the election of a constitutional judge because of a right-wing campaign cooking up a bunch of lies about her.
That’s a lot of shit, especially given they’re just 70 days in office.