Merkel and the refugees: How German leader emerged from a political abyss

By Noah BarkinBERLIN (Reuters) - Near the end of a recent campaign speech in northern Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel turned to Europe's refugee crisis of 2015 and offered her audience a comforting dual message.Germans should be proud of the warm welcome they gavehundreds of thousands of asylum seekers, many of them fleeing war and persecution in the Middle East, she told an audience of over 1,000 gathered in the fishing village of Steinhude.Then she shifted gears: "What happened in 2015 canno