In Germany, the tea party has a name: Thilo Sarrazin. A one-man populist revolt, he has been ridiculed by the political establishment. He has been forced off the executive board of Germany's central bank. His fellow Social Democrats want to expel him from the party. And he is crying all the way to the bank. Sales of his book "Germany Does Away With Itself" are expected to top one million copies by Christmas.
On 464 pages, Mr. Sarrazin explains why the country is doomed: too many immigrants of the wrong kind, mainly Muslim. These folks are under-gifted and under-trained, hence a permanent under-class both unable and unwilling to assimilate. And they will outbreed the locals so that 100 years from now only 20 million "real" Germans will be left.
Chancellor Angela Merkel originally called the book "not helpful," even "totally unacceptable." Others bad-mouthed Mr. Sarrazin as crypto-fascist and racist. But like the tea party in the U.S., he had struck a chord with his assault on the liberal consensus. And lo, eight weeks into the free-for-all, Mrs. Merkel and her Christian Democrats have changed signals. She now calls multiculturalism "failed, totally failed." Her colleague Horst Seehofer, the head of the Bavarian wing, wants to stop immigration from "other cultures." A resolution for next month's party congress invokes "tougher sanctions" for those who refuse to integrate.
