Monday, January 16, 2017

The Steinbach Strategy

In the old days (before Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and internet news)....if you attempted in Germany to be a political figure outside of the major political parties, then the big-guy news media could stifle your message and make you into a very small individual.

This weekend, CDU's Erika Steinbach....quit the party.  Her accusations against the Party, Merkel and the pro-immigration stance is more or legendary stuff.  She finally said "enough" and quit the party, but remains in the Bundestag.

Now?  She'll have a vast arsenal of media tools to make comments and thump upon Merkel, the CDU, the Greens, the SPD, and the Linke Party.

A pain for the CDU?  I think Steinbach can spend the next couple of months criticizing the direction of the government and have 500,000 Germans reading her comments daily and quietly asking their party preferences (the other guys) about the screw-ups and why the government can't fix itself.

My humble belief is that Steinbach may slowly drag both the CDU and SPD to a position where minor change or two occur over immigration, and help both parties recover.  If you were looking for some wicked entertainment in German politics in 2017....you just found it.

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