Last year, before the election period in September....I was sitting through another chat forum on public TV, and this political strategist got onto the topic of 'centralist'. He laid out ten different political areas, and on each single one of them....the CDU had selected a policy that was absolutely on the center-point of the left and right. He then came to the conclusion point.....this was not the CDU of Helmet Kohl who tended to have a more conservative view of politics....this was Merkel's CDU who was firmly anchored to center-point politics.
What happens with this type of strategy planning? One key thing is that it literally destroys any inertia or charm with the SPD Party (who is supposed to be left-of-center). You could probably engage a hundred people who say they generally vote SPD, and find that since the Merkel years started....at least ten of them have voted for the CDU in elections.
Yesterday, as the big CDU meeting was wrapping up in Hamburg, Merkel was on-stage with 'AKK' (her replacement as party-chief), and in the background, the theme for this big hyped-up political party meeting.....the German word for center. AKK's intent? To carry the centralist view forward.
The sad thing here is that strategy left the SPD Party with few options, and a continual downward trend on numbers. They are sitting near 14 to 16 percent of the national polling now (actually even with the AfD Party). Ahead of them? The Greens and Merkel's CDU.
But this one odd topic came up after the party vote on Friday.....are half the members of the CDU disenchanted with following the Merkel/AKK path ahead? If so.....what happens? Generally, if you were conserative in voting patterns and you didn't want to give your vote to the CDU.....you were left with the FDP (mostly a 7-to-9 percent party), or the AfD (who you wouldn't admit that you voted for them). Some guy last night did a joke suggestion that this disenfranchised group of CDU folks could run off and make up another new party. It probably wouldn't happen, but stranger things have occurred over the past decade.
Are we at some evolutionary stage of German politics? I think so.
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