Worried about losing votes, some conservative politicians are already promising to defend the current system's basic structure against the FDP's agenda.
Whether Mr Westerwelle will take the rap for the FDP's electoral setbacks is also unclear.
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Furthermore, the realities of German coalition building means that the FDP's political leverage will be fairly limited.
But the FDP's shellacking in Berlin is a setback for the anti-bail-out camp.
Up to a point, Mrs Merkel may welcome them: the FDP's 2009 triumph came largely at the CDU's expense.
As promising as the FDP's current rise is, by next year, supply siders and "locusts" may have a much harder time again in Germany.
WSJ: Daniel Schwammenthal: Germany��s Free-Market FDP Is on the Rise
The upstart Pirate Party, champions of internet freedom and privacy, got nearly five times that and will take the FDP's place in the city legislature.
The FDP's travails are not an immediate threat to the coalition.
Unless the government is prepared to accept a sharp rise in unemployment, the FDP's neo-liberals will have to swallow their economic principles and accept more market-distorting state intervention.
The problem would be how to reconcile the FDP's comprehensive tax overhaul with the rather modest tax-cut plans of the Christian Democrats and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union.
WSJ: Daniel Schwammenthal: Germany��s Free-Market FDP Is on the Rise
The FDP's preference for private over state seems unfashionable.
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FDP's biggest flaw is that it has moved down-market.
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There are disputes between those who would court the voters (the general secretary, Christian Lindner, wants to make permanent the closure of seven nuclear plants) and those who prefer to polish the FDP's usual policies on tax cuts, deregulation and welfare.
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The two met for an hour in Berlin's chancellery on Monday afternoon, where an FDP spokesman described the mood as excellent.
"This clearly makes the FDP the third power among the parties in Germany, " the party's secretary-general Guido Westerwelle said after the vote.
"It's not impossible that this new party could sap half a percent from the FDP and thereby kick them out of parliament, " said Niedermayer.
They know what's coming and still they are avoiding the SPD and flocking to the free-market FDP.
WSJ: Daniel Schwammenthal: Germany��s Free-Market FDP Is on the Rise
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