Merkel’s party calls her the ‘anti-Trump’ as she seeks fourth term

Merkel singled out the forces of “populism”, meaning ordinary voters inspired by Brexit and Donald Trump, as her biggest challenge. She has governed Europe’s top economic power with the help of coalitions, a distinct feature of the German political landscape.

“This election will be more difficult than any before it, at least not since national reunification” in 1990,” she said and complained about the “polarisation of our society”.

The German chancellor, the EU’s longest serving leader, told AFP “many leaders” were looking to her to counter populism, suggesting that she intends to continue serving the liberal Atlantic agenda. Germany does not set term limits for leaders, since 2005.

Her coyness about the obsequious honorary title “leader of the free world”, is belied by her open border policies and her Obama sycophancy.

The CDU’s Saxony state premier Stanislaw Tillich confirmed that by fawning over Merkel: “She is basically the anti-Trump,” he told the newspaper group Redaktionsnetzwerk. Obama too praised Merkel last week as an “outstanding partner” suggesting he would vote for her.

Her party believes she is their best bet to save the European Union. On German television channel ARD, Merkel vowed to seek a “strong Europe” after Britain voted to leave the bloc. CDU leaders welcomed her announcement with “thunderous applause”, party sources told AFP.

“We are facing struggles in Europe and internationally for our values and our interests and, simply put, for our way of life,” Merkel, 62, told reporters, but did not add that she is reponsible for engineering the struggles she is now facing.

Merkel is the first former Communist to lead the reunited country and to welcome some two million asylum seekers over the last two years, but her party has grown fearful of the rightwing Alternative for Germany party (AfD), which has harnessed widespread anxiety about migration.

A survey on Sunday showed that 33 percent of German voters backed Merkel’s conservatives, down nine points from the last national election in 2013. The AfD has risen from nowhere to 13 percent, according to an independent opinion research institute Emnid.

Spiegel Online said the CDU might suffer from “Merkel fatigue”. “Even though there is no Trump in sight in Germany, the US showed that the unimaginable can become real,” it said.

The former member of the Communist Youth movement, is notorious for her lack of patriotism. At a election victory celebration of her own party in 2015, Merkel grabbed the only German flag present on the stage with a disgusted facial expression, shook her head and disposed of it.

In 2016, during a visit with president Erdogan, the German flag was replaced by a Turkish one, leaving Merkel framed by two Turkish flags.

As with most other German politicians, Merkel does not recognize Germans as a people. In an exaggerated effort to avoid being called “racist” and as “redemption for past crimes of Germany” many of her liberal ideological stances harm Germans.