Saturday, February 8, 2020

Saturday Morning Update over Thuringia Crisis

1.  ARD put up an article over the clean-up required for the mess.  The chief cleaners?  The right-of-center CDU (Merkel's crew) and the FDP Party.  At the heart of this matter....the idea by the CDU Party chief.....Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer.....says that the Greens and SPD Party need to offer an alternate person that the CDU would quickly go and support to be the state Premier-President.  Most people are laughing because the Greens marginally got 5-percent in the election, and the SPD marginally got 8-percent.....so the same joke which the chaos going....would repeat.

2.  The former Premier-President (Linke-Party).....Ramelow....who had hoped to be voted back into his job as Premier-President, now says that he's absolutely against another election occurring (so reported by regional public TV MDR).  His chief argument?  It'd take 70 days before you could run up an election, and there's no 'real' government in charge for that period.  Some fear that the Linke Party might not be able to repeat their success?   That might be a minor part of the story.

3.  Dumping on the CDU's Party 'boss' (AKK)?  There's an article up on N-TV (German commercial news network) which addresses that problem.  Frankly, about half of the CDU Party members are not supporting AKK, and see her actions in this period as lacking.  I will add that the alternate future 'boss' (Merz) is often brought up now, and he's making headway on his chatter.

The weekend cooling off some of the chatter?  I think most Germans really don't care because it's strictly a matter within one single state.  Lets be honest, this is affecting a group of 2.2-million Germans within Thuringia....NOT the entire country.  But the news media (particularly ARD and ZDF, the public folks) have blasted away and made this into a national 'mess'.

Mathematically, you can add the numbers up, and there's no way to reach a consensus, unless you have a dozen non-left members of the assembly 'stand-down' or abstain....then have the leadership vote once again.  You can lay this numbers game out in front of 12-year-old kids, and they will tell you the same story.  If you can only mount 42 votes out of a 90-person assembly.....you can't pass your guy to some leadership role.  End of the whole debate.

The AfD folks?  Quietly sitting in the corner and in some fashion....grinning.  They'd done exactly what the strategy called for....using the rules of the system to ask a question, and the answer simply can't fit (round-hole syndrome).

Sunday night will unveil the Anne Will Forum on ARD (9:45 PM).  My guess is that this will be the topic, and it'll be a very heated discussion, with no real conclusion.  But it ought to be interesting to watch.

No comments: