Merkel Increasingly Isolated On Austerity Train

All Things Considered:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel made all the right gestures Monday: the obligatory phone call congratulating French president-elect Francois Hollande. She vowed that the two will "work together well and intensively." And she invited Hollande to Berlin after his inauguration and said she'd welcome him "with open arms."
But clearly the French election results mark a setback for Merkel and her goal of solving Europe's economic crisis with financial austerity.
She openly supported incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy. She insisted again on Monday in Berlin that an E.U. pact signed earlier this year limiting debt and imposing budget cuts across the 17 nation eurozone was not up for amendment or change, as president-elect Hollande would like.
"We in Germany are of the view, and so am I personally, that this fiscal pact is not negotiable. It has been negotiated and has been signed by 25 countries," she said. Then she added, "We are talking about two sides of the same coin — progress is only to be achieved by solid finances plus growth."
In Greece, parties that backed the two big E.U. bailouts lost their majority in parliament.
Merkel cautioned Greece to stick to its strict cost-cutting program. And there was bad news for Merkel at home as well: over the weekend voters in a northern state ousted a coalition led by Merkel's conservative CDU party in local elections. It's a setback that may hurt her party as it heads into national elections next year.

The German obsession with inflation is going to burn them, but the rest of Europe will be toast before that happens.  Amazingly, the failures in Europe don't prevent Republicans from embracing the same bad ideas.  Hopefully, they will suffer the same electoral setbacks as their right-leaning peers (well, not as crazy) in Europe.