Friedrich Merz faces a stark choice: Reshape the unpopular reform drive on which he has staked his chancellorship \u2014 or risk going down defending it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The day after his conservatives\u2019 worst election defeat in postwar German history and the far-right Alternative for Germany party\u2019s second win in two weeks in votes in the east of the country, Merz acknowledged that the German public\u2019s rejection of his reform drive was a big part of his party\u2019s problem. But he exhibited no clear plan for what to do about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Leaders from Merz\u2019s Christian Democratic Union publicly closed ranks around the chancellor and his reform drive on Monday, despite growing internal concern that his leadership is rapidly driving their party toward demise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In truth, they have little choice. The alternative \u2014\u00a0an attempt to replace him \u2014\u00a0is too divisive and risky at a time when the AfD is leading in polls, and the Kremlin is threatening Europe in increasingly aggressive terms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Merz suggested he recognized the scale of the alarm inside his party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is a severe blow, and its repercussions will be felt for a long time,\u201d Merz said of the result in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where the CDU crashed out of the state parliament with just 4.9% of the vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Friedrich Merz faces a stark choice: Reshape the unpopular reform drive on which he has staked his chancellorship \u2014 or risk going down defending it. The day after his conservatives\u2019 worst election defeat in postwar German history and the far-right Alternative for Germany party\u2019s second win in two weeks in votes in the east of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36667,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36666"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36668,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36666\/revisions\/36668"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}