Word: merkel
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...Angela Merkel, the front runner to become Germany's next Chancellor, developed her style early. As a 12-year-old growing up in the communist eastern part of the country, she was asked by a swimming teacher to experiment with a low diving board at the local pool. She edged to the end and stopped. Forty minutes passed before she jumped in. "I need a lot of start-up time," Merkel told a local journalist. "I am not spontaneously courageous...
...Merkel, 51, has been no less meticulous in charting her political campaign. As leader of the Christian Democratic Union, she will be running in federal elections Sept. 18 against Gerhard Schröder, whose Social Democrats have shared power with the Green Party since 1998. Unlike Schröder, Merkel doesn't make grand promises, preferring to talk about, say, trimming waste in the health-care system or tweaking consumer tax rates. Judging from polls, the strategy is working: the Christian Democrats last week led the Social Democrats by 13 points, though 29% of voters say they're still undecided. Merkel...
...Angela Merkel has been speaking for about 45 minutes to a Dresden campaign rally of some 2,000 people. She's not much of an orator, but her listeners are attentive as they munch sausages and drink beer in the sunshine. Even a group dressed up as cows - holding signs that say don't milk us! to protest her proposed increase to value-added tax ( vat) - are as docile as, well, cattle. Merkel has defended the unpopular policy, meant to fund a reduction in social-security contributions from wages, by arguing that "people don't earn too much in Germany...
...Linksbündnis, according to Forsa. The appeal, Linksbündnis co-founder and former spd Finance Minister Oskar Lafontaine told Time, is that the party "offers an alternative. Wage- and salary-earners, pensioners, young people looking for education urgently need somebody who represents them in parliament." Merkel knows she needs to reach these groups, too. She never misses a chance to remind voters of Schröder's 1998 election pledge that if he couldn't reduce unemployment he wouldn't deserve re-election. Joblessness has increased by 1 million since he first took office. The cdu is pitching...
Ever since German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder announced plans in May for snap elections this fall, it was a given that Angela Merkel would boot the Social Democrats out of office. But now, with the campaign in full swing, it's beginning to look as though her only option will be to form a cumbersome grand coalition with her political opponents. For now, Merkel's Christian Democrats (cdu) are still ahead of Schröder's Social Democrats - by 13 points in the Election Research Group's latest weekly poll for zdf television. But missteps...