hesk: by "incredibly boring" I meant the style, not the substance.

I'm relieved to read :-)

In the last few years, I saw a few polls on German voters' desires regarding the best party combination to govern. It was indeed distressing to see that for most voters as well as most SPD voters, a Grand Coalition or Union/FDP was preferred to anything with Green involvement - even tough, as I saw it, most successes of the Schröder government were tied to the Greens, and most failures to the SPD.

On the other hand, as you write, the Realo wing rule had some unfortunate effects. The Greens used to be taunted for being dreamy-eyed crusties, but now come the yuppies - the guy representing the Greens on TV debates I saw before the Schleswig-Holstein elections threw me off, he would have fitted perfectly into Westerwelle's Spaßpartei...

Anyway, I wish them well, and if they will have to be the opposition of a Grand Coalition, I hope the result will be double digits for them in the next state elections.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}