The Merkel "Poker Game"

After the smoke cleared yesterday, this is how you can interpret the Seehofer versus Chancellor Merkel situation.

First, the Chancellor basically had to give in and accept Seehofer's changes or prepare to form a new government, or in the worst case....have a new election.  You can go and asking the polling folks how folks feel, and a minimum of 50-percent of the public are very open to a new election. You will also find that the numbers right now for both the CDU and SPD....are lower than they were in September 2017's national election.

Yesterday, I noticed one poll suggesting that the AfD had now climbed up to within one point of the SPD.  The effect was both the center-right and center-left parties were losing voters, with the four lesser parties all gaining a point or two.  Those four lesser parties now control near 50-plus percent of the national vote.  If you go back to the 1960s and 1970s....the CDU/CSU and SPD Parties....would typically get 90-plus percent of the national vote. 

What the SPD was hoping back in January, was that they'd get this great chance to rebuild confidence, but this would require a minimum of two years.  They don't want an election in 2018, or 2019 (my humble opinion).

Second, the Chancellor has one single card left to play....this emergency EU meeting in Brussels in the first week of January.  She wants them to throw out the Dublin Convention entirely, and work up some type of new treaty that involves 'forced' acceptance within the EU of migrants and immigrants. 

The odds of this being accepted?  You can find at least five members of the EU who are openly against this type of EU regulation.  My suspicion is that at least an additional five would lay out enough concerns to make it very difficult. 

Third, polling over the past couple of days says that most Germans favor Seehofer's idea of moving failed visa applicants out of the country as quickly as possible, especially if they represent 'risk'.  No one says how the 'risk' factor will be laid out and that just gets pro-asylum folks hyped up to fight Seehofer.

Fourth, if Merkel fails to get traction with the EU method?  Well, that really would suggest that Seehofer won the game.  But then they will start to deport folks who were already entered into the system in other EU member states....back to those states.  I'm guessing this will upset the Italians to some degree, and maybe the Greeks (they both will get a fair number of these folks).  You would probably start to see this by September, and it would generate more hostile feelings around the EU. 

So that's the basic 'game' being played out.  If you sit and listen to the 'experts' talk about north Africa, and the number of people in some waiting status to get a rubber raft position and get picked up as an asylum-seeker....it gets into the hundreds of thousands of people.  They've given up on their homeland and figure Europe will accept them....in particular, Germany.  If you were assembling the legacy items of Chancellor Merkel and her era....it will end up being totally about migration and asylum.