I was in Rostock last week and, simply by seeing the amount of support in the form of posters and graffiti there it was clear they were going to make hay. No surprise, either, that they did better in the poorer and less squeamish former GDR than in the wealthier, more liberal west.
It's almost as if unilaterally inviting a few million young, unemployed immigrant men into your country is going to produce a backlash, isn't it? Who'd have thought, eh?
The average middle-class German these days is pathetically desperate NOT to be be racist. They fall over themselves to be nice about migrants, even when they clearly know damn well that the whole thing was an unmitigated fùck up.
I was talking to one the other day and I said that, from the outside looking in, Merkel's decision looked crazy. He agreed that it was crazy, but that at the time he'd supported it because he'd liked the idea of Germany being seen as the good guy. They're all blackmailed by their history, basically.