Schröder’s Nuclear Option

You have to hand it to Gerhard Schröder. His party suffers a humiliating defeat – the first loss in 40 years in North-Rhine Westfalia – and yet HE is the one that makes the headlines in the papers instead of the victorious Christian Democrats (CDU): 

Nobody
in Germany really expected the crucial state elections in Germany’s
most populous state of North-Rhine Westphalia on Sunday to turn out
differently. After years of bleeding support, plunging party membership
and rising unemployment figures across Germany, Chancellor Gerhard
Schroeder’s Social Democratic party (SPD) was clearly heading for a
monumental defeat. And that is precisely what happened. The party was
pummelled. After 39 years holding the reigns of power in this heavily
blue-collar population, which is also home to the industrial Ruhr
region, the party managed only a paltry 37.1 percent of the vote. The
opposition Christian Democrats (CDU) garnered 44.8 percent. Bye bye SPD
bastion.

And yet, despite — or perhaps because of — the profound implications
of the vote for the power structure in Germany’s upper house of
parliament, the Bundesrat, where Schroeder’s party is now hopelessly
outnumbered, the actual results of the North-Rhine Westphalia vote
quickly turned into a political sideshow. Immediately following the
elections, Chancellor Schroeder pulled one last rabbit out of his hat.
His party announced that Schroeder was calling for general elections to
be moved up — originally scheduled to take place in September 2006 —
to autumn of this year.

Why would he risk everything for an early election?  Clearly the wind is at the back of his opponents and the locusts are swarming.  But maybe he has outmaneuvered his hapless adversaries, since – as Der Spindoktor asks – can we really imagine a Chancellor Angela Merkel?  What does she really stand for?  No one really knows, except more of the same:  Hartz IV without the "Kapitalismus-Debatte".  But maybe the German electorate is disgusted enough to try anything.  As one voter commented on Sunday: "Wenn schon Scheisse, dann richtig Scheisse!"