DOWN GOES SCHMELLING! DOWN GOES SCHMELLING!

Schröder's dilemma: Set for a right hook, he gets hit with a left (Judy Dempsey, MAY 27, 2005, International Herald Tribune)

Just when Schröder and his party should be putting all their energy into defeating the conservative Christian Democrats led by Angela Merkel, disgruntled Social Democrats and parties further left are talking about setting up a grand alliance to punish the chancellor for policies they contend have betrayed socialist principles.

The instigator of this attempt to weaken the Social Democrats is Oskar Lafontaine, the maverick politician who served briefly as finance minister in Schröder's first government, in 1998.

Lafontaine, who quit the cabinet in 1999 after falling out with Schröder over economic policy, announced Tuesday that he was leaving the Social Democrats to try to forge a leftist alliance.

That group, he said, could include the Party of Democratic Socialists - the former Communists, who are strong in eastern Germany - and the Wahlalternative, a new leftist movement supported by trade unionists and others who believe that Schröder has pushed the Social Democrats too far toward the center

Start by admitting
From cradle to tomb
Isn't that long a stay.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 27, 2005 6:41 AM