Don't get your hopes up. Merz would sell his own mother if it raised his chances of getting elected. He's just listening to what's unpopular about the current government and claiming to do whatever is the exact opposite. A lot of it is just hot air from yet another populist.

I expect him to continue support for Ukraine though, so that's good at least.

Thank you for the perspective.

The new fragrance, Orange Potato Musk. Mmmmmm

Merz ist a Joke and he will most certainly not pull through if the Trump Administration interferes. Just another US Puppet, which in Turn is a Russian puppet... so yeah, just a stunt.

Also, what would even be the end of the war? By Putin logic complete and unconditional surrender by Ukraine would also be the end of the war.

Merz's threat is not "fuck off behind 1991 borders within 24 hours". Complete smoke and mirrors shitshow.

sorry to break it to you, but Merz is a populist. He will tell you everything to get voted.

And, frankly, he is a real dickhead. The little Trump of Germany.

The Spartans got annihilated so maybe not a great group to quote.

As an american, I'll suffer the bullshit that the right does, if it means Ukraine gets to still exist. Give me some of their pain. I wish I could take that for them.

Oh, believe me...we have that manufacturing capabilities. I live near where parts of Taurus are made... It's just that there's no "demand" and the bundeswehr doesn't have enough money to just order them to stockpile.

Taurus would be used more or less like Storm Shadow against high value strategic targets. The big difference is that Germany would have to default to allow its use on targets inside Russia, since activly being part of the targeting might very well be unconstitutional. So what could be expected are a bunch of Russian jets, ammunition stockpiles and maybe the Kerch Bridge being blown up. Ukrainian drones are not stealthy, so they are much easier to intercept or to warn against. Hence something like Taurus can make a difference.

So it is usefull, but it is not going to change the war fundamentally.

Makes sense, that’s such a Taurus thing to do

"End the war or I'll arm the shit out of Ukraine" is different from "end the war please daddy I'll let you have half of Ukraine."

Sounds like this guy is a piece of shit though so who knows.

Let's see how big on words he is once he's out of opposition. Either way his leadership comes at the cost of him being a 90s style neo libertarian with his own private plane. Other than that he is conservative through and through.

So (I) expect no big investments into health care, education, green technology or public transport but more in tax cuts for the wealthy and investments into "new and revolutionary technologies that will solve all our problems for sure bro" and individual transport infrastructure (which tbh would actually be needed since the German infrastructure is in a pretty bad state with a lot of highway bridges being at the end of their life cycle but on the other hand schools and healthcare are in dire need of investments too). And for all the problems we just blame migrants and strengthen right wing populist positions.

Soo yeah, not really happy with him, not really happy with anyone else atm.