interesting round-up of headline responses to the Merkel victory from around europe:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/...651726,00.html


one that interested me was La Liberation:
France's Libération saw some contradiction in the fact that a pro-business party will now become the junior partner in Germany's ruling coalition. "The crisis shows the failure of a certain liberalism but, in Germany, the liberals have won," the paper wrote. It added that Germany's -- like France's -- left needed to get its act together: "To stop liberalism from spreading in Germany and elsewhere, there needs to be a strong and united left that can beat the right and tailor its policies to win votes in the center. The SPD has not understood the need to adapt. ... For the left in France and Germany, the Rhine is no longer a border."
how does the French left define "liberalism" such that it is seen as an alien orthodoxy?