While their loss of direct domination is the most apparent, it is just them who are in the most comfortable and safest situation in coalition pokers.
Intuitively, I'd say the same is true for the Dutch equivalent, the CDA, that rarely has not been part of government. It probably also helps that in the Netherlands the christian fundies are represented in their own parties (CU and SGP) and hence don't form part of a government coalition - except for the current one... CDA has the reputation now to be opportune: swing left or right during coalition building - I could imagine the CDU growing more and more into a similar position. Although I know little of the internal factions within the party.
Now that you mentioned the Dutch Christian fundies, that reminds me of something. The CDU/CSU of course does cover Catholic fundies (mainly in South Germany), but not the protestant fundies (Lutheran Church in North Germany is decidedly more liberal and sane).
However, there is a separate Christian fundie party backed by the as yet dwarf Protestant fundies, the Partei Bibeltreuer Christen = Party of Bible-Faithful Christians (PBC). It is nowhere near entering the parliament: a mere 0.12% in the 2005 federal elections, but I still find a mass of 57 thousand convinced creationists somehow... worrying. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
And indeed I think that the CDU will not take its "Leipziger Parteitagsbeschluesse" very serious. In 2005 the CDU ran a full economic free market campaign (as you probably know, but maybe accidental readers not) and the outcome was much worse than expected. We have grand coalition now, so CDU and SPD can't go completely in different directions on the issues, but I frankly don't see on which substance CDU and SPD will run their next campaigns as probably no party will explain that the current period was a complete waste of time and after all the politics was as well not so incredible different from the red-green gov under Schroeder (Can anybody name something significant happened during the last years, else than the VAT increase and some family policy where the CDU minister did a pretty much SPD like policy?). Der Amerikaner ist die Orchidee unter den MenschenVolker Pispers
One of the Dutch Christian parties, the SGP or 'Staatskundig Geroformeerde Partij', is definitely fundie, they don't allow women to vote(their husbands do it for them). the otheone, the CU or ChristenUnie is more mixed, and recently got a lot of CDA voters who thought the CDA had become too conservative/neoliberal.
I know, and this is why I shudder at the thought of even just tens of thousands of PBC list-voters: those must be real hardcore creationists; and they proselytize. Just checked prior results (the first figure is votes on party lists, the second votes for directly elected candidates):
1994-8: +10%/+73% 1998-2002: +41%/+53% 2002-5: +7%/-20%
On the other hand, I checked how they fared in recent regional elections where they ran, and that does indicate a ceiling:
Baden-Württenberg: 2001-20,528, 2006-26,759 Rhineland-Palatinate: 2001-5,379, 2006-4,973 Mecklenburg-Vorpommern: 2002-1,312, 2006-1,957 Bremen: 2003-1,009, 2007-960 Hessen: 2003-6,674, 2008-did not run Lower Saxony: 2003-7,819, 2008-5,851 Hamburg: 2004-1,571, 2008-did not run *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
PBC are in part subsidiaries of, in totality fans of, and supported/funded by, the US fundamentalists. Thus they bring forward the entire ideology: the millenarist Christian fundie support for Israel (because the Book of Revelations predicts the re-emergence of Israel and it fighting a big war just before the Apocalypse), creationism as 'science' and 'evilution' as false science, push for homeschooling, abortion is evil. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
PBC leader Gerhard Heinzmann, who has no problem being labelled a Christian fundamentalist, said he was pleased with Bush's re-election. "There's an extraordinary agreement on issues between our supporters and Bush voters," Heinzmann said, citing opposition to gay marriage and abortion as examples. Both groups "not only elect their government, but also pray for its members," he said. And that's what counts, he added. ...Rüdiger Hauth, who monitors religious sects for the Evangelical Church, Germany's largest Protestant church, in the western German region of Westphalia, said there are ten thousands of supporters. But Richard Ziegert, Hauth's colleague from the southwestern region of Palatinate, believes that there are more than 250,000 radical Christians in the country and US missionaries are increasingly coming to Germany to spread the word.
"There's an extraordinary agreement on issues between our supporters and Bush voters," Heinzmann said, citing opposition to gay marriage and abortion as examples. Both groups "not only elect their government, but also pray for its members," he said. And that's what counts, he added.
...Rüdiger Hauth, who monitors religious sects for the Evangelical Church, Germany's largest Protestant church, in the western German region of Westphalia, said there are ten thousands of supporters. But Richard Ziegert, Hauth's colleague from the southwestern region of Palatinate, believes that there are more than 250,000 radical Christians in the country and US missionaries are increasingly coming to Germany to spread the word.
/make your cross where it belongs "If you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles." Sun Tzu
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
A Presidential European: Uffe Ellemann-Jensen
Reportedly watching the final in Lisbon ,on a portable television, while attempting to extricate his country from the treaty rejection mess his voters had created for him, Mr. Ellemann-Jensen watched Denmark pull off a resounding victory over the German machine. Entering the hall where the formal dinner marking the final night of this inaugural EU summit, Ellemann-Jensen famously quips to reporters "If you can't join them, beat them!". Negotiations, successfully followed up by the Edinburgh accords in the following year, save the Maastricht treaty, nascent EU institutions and Denmark's membership in them.
My latest one is "After darkness comes fuel" (which is an actual commerical slogan here by BP) - I like "After fuel comes darkness" a lot better...
I had completely forgotten about Ellemann-Jensen. Serendipity strikes!
