This despite some anti-foreigner escapades by Rüttgers: a decade ago he coined the slogan Kinder statt Inder ( = children instead of Indians [invited as highly qualified workers]), and more recently he deemed outsourcing stupid on the reason that Romanian workers are lazy.

But, to Rüttgers's credit(?), I can't decide whether these were outings of a real xenophobe or hapless attempts to woo the base (a la Stoiber). I remember him as one of the less social-conservative ideologising ministers of Helmut Kohl (he was minister for education and research).

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}