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Notes -
Related to @IGI-111 's post: https://www.themotte.org/post/1754/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/310065?context=8#context.
After the recent federal elections, the victorious conservative CDU are looking to give themselves financial leeway by undoing the the so-called "debt brake", written into the constitution, which strictly limits how much debt the government can build up to balance its budget. In order to do so, they called upon the old parliament to quickly push through a slew of constitutional changes including the relaxation of the debt rules. In order to collect the required two-thirds majority, the CDU has given the Greens a constitutional commitment to climate neutrality by 2045.
In order to govern, the CDU aims to form a coalition with the Social-Democrats. And those have now announced their demand: Unconditionally legalize abortion. A trifle compared to what the greens got, who will not even be part of the coalition.
During the election the CDU played the part of the culture-warriors standing up for conservative Germans. They broke taboos to demand a crackdown on immigration, painted the Greens as agents of deindustrialization and poverty, and made a stand on balancing the budget without further debt. But that was then, and now it's time to jettison the drama in favor of getting along with everyone except the nationalist AfD who, I remind you, received the second-largest share of votes.
This is pretty much telling the stupid neo-nazi tinfoil hats that yes, they were right, the establishment is entirely willing to conspire against the people, democracy is a sham and the constitution is a worthless piece of paper.
Looking forward to a great four years.
"The people" are only the 20% that voted for AfD?
It sounds to me like the CDU gave away nothing and got everything they wanted. Support for abortion in germany is in excess of 70% and as for the green stuff thats far away and the constitution can obviously just be changed (like this time) if it becomes a problem.
Presumably, the CDU also conspired against all of its own voters who believed the CDU’s rhetoric. A democracy simply cannot work if parties gain votes by promising to do A and then do -A when in power.
The lack of faith and interest in democracy corresponds directly to this tendency.
”You see, there's an implicit pact offered to every Minister by his senior officials. If the Minister will help us to implement the opposite policies to the one that he is pledged to, we will help him to pretend that he is in fact what he was going to do in his Manifesto.”
Yes, Minister
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