Question to All International Forum Members

[minionofmidas]

Colin - CDU.
Philip - certainly wouldn't "belong" to a party, but would vote CDU or FDP if bothered to vote.

[minionofmidas]

Colin - CDU.
Philip - certainly wouldn't "belong" to a party, but would vote CDU or FDP if bothered to vote.

Could it be generalized this way?:

--> Republicans: CDU/CSU
--> Libertarians and libertarian-leaning Republicans: FDP
--> centrist Democrats: CDU/CSU (or possibly FDP?)
--> liberal Democrats: SPD or Greens
--> very liberal Democrats (BRTD-style ): PDS

Add
--> Populist Democrats: SPD; and for some of them possibly far right "protest".
--> Populist-leaning Republicans: SPD or CDU, depending on regional and family traditions, and indirectly confession (Protestant implies SPD, Catholic implies CDU); and possibly far right "protest".
--> Populist Democrats (East Germany): PDS

[minionofmidas]

FDP is pretty Libertarian by its programme, both socially and economically.
However, the program does not always have much influence on the party's behaviour in government - although since this is more true socially than economically, it should suit you fine.
The FDP has very few real hardcore supporters, however. They tend to get a lot of votes from people who want to "keep them in parliament" (that 5% threshold) to help the CDU form the government.
FDP's dependency on the CDU has gotten less in the last 5 years or so thanks to a more populist course (not in the US sense...just in the sense of that TR quote, "whoever says loudest what is on everyone's mind").

[minionofmidas]

Petra Kelly had a subscription for their newspaper.
I once had a job filing her newspaper archive (now at the Green Party archive).