The hype about Pirates' state election successes is over. Their nose-diving at the polls for next national election due in fall 2013 has mandated an election platform and program on federal level. They tried to make those homeworks at the party convention in Bochum, Ruhr Valley, North Rhine-Westphalia last weekend.
The Pirates wanna depict themselves as "social-liberal", a term that has normally been used to describe a coalition of Social Democrats and Free Democrats or the mixture of the respective party tenets.
What did one get as results in Bochum?
A party that wants to be "greener" than the Eco-Greens. The Pirates wanna abolish all nuclear power plans within the next three (!) years.
With even more "red" than the Social Democrats or former GDR Communists / Socialists, now called "The Leftists", they demand an all-inclusive generous support system with minimum income, minimum hourly wages and minimum pensions - but reject a policy of full employment. They call it a "liberal and social economic order" with personal self-determination, self-fulfillment and well-being for all people.
This "copy and paste" approach obviously indicates a lack of own ideas - creating a land of milk and honey by easy going and an economic order that combines the goodies of the former GDR ("being cared of from cradle to casket") and the weird thinking of "STAMOCAP" (state monopolistic capitalism) is wishful thinking of theirs. Obviously too many social-workers dream of their studies' essays where Marxism-Leninism had quite some space.
Why should one take the copy if you could have the original?
The race is on track, and the other left-of-center parties will point out the Pirates' naivety and greenness.
The Conservatives (CDU / CSU) with Merkel don't have a majority, just below 40 percent. The Free-Democratic Liberals (FDP) wouldn't pass the 5 pc qualification hurdle for parliamentary representation if national elections were held next Sunday.
At the moment, there is a left-of-center majority but not with SPD/Greens alone as two-party-coalition.
With a "Black-Green" experimental concept, Merkel will try to keep herself in power by outmaneuvering the Social-Dems of Steinbrück, Steinmeier, Gabriel who will only go for "Red-Green" and nothing else.
IMO, the Pirates are going to be crushed by both sides of the aisle and tossed to the political waste paper basket if the political establishment of all current parliamentary parties succeeds in making them a public laughing stock.
Well, and all the media will jump on the band-waggon as well.