It was a sentence that Guido Westerwelle, head of the pro-business Free Democrats and soon to be the junior coalition partner in Germany's next government, couldn't repeat often enough.

"I won't sign any coalition agreement that doesn't include a simple, low and fair tax system," he would say whenever he got the chance. It was a cornerstone of his campaign -- and it seems to have worked. His FDP raked in 14.6 percent of the vote, the party's best result ever.

But when asked to repeat the promise on Monday, the day after the general elections that secured a second term for Chancellor Angela Merkel, Westerwelle suddenly got cold feet. He said only, "I am not going to repeat that sentence again. I have said it often enough."

Not Up for Debate

The cat that suddenly got Westerwelle's tongue has a name: Angela Merkel. The two will meet on Monday to begin the process of hammering out a coalition agreement that will guide the next four years of German governance -- and Westerwelle knows that Merkel's Christian Democrats, which got 33.8 percent of the vote on Sunday, will not accept many of the policy proposals that his party holds dear. Radical tax cuts are among them.

Indeed, this Wednesday and Thursday the pre-negotiation back-and-forth has gotten underway in earnest. The CDU has spent much of the week assuring voters that no radical changes are underway. A number of party leaders have promised that areas such as healthcare, security and minimum wage agreements for some industries are not up for debate.

Speaking to the tabloid Bild, however, deputy FDP head Cornelia Pieper said, "it is not good manners to say what can and cannot be discussed before coalition talks have even begun." Another party honcho, Andreas Pinkwart, also said "the CDU can't declare vast swaths of policy to be non-negotiable."

The FDP's frustration is understandable. For the last four years, Germany has been in a period of political stasis, with Merkel's center-right CDU ruling together with the center-left Social Democrats. Far-reaching reform was a virtual impossibility. Yet, now that voters have handed Merkel the coalition partner she has yearned for, her party has turned a deaf ear on many of the FDP's demands.

Condescension Hasn't Sat Well

Merkel, for example, has said tax cuts will not be coming before 2011 and has also refused to be specific about the size and breadth of any such cuts. The FDP, for its part, made rapid tax cuts a central plank in its platform.

Just after the election in an interview on public television station ARD, Merkel likewise brushed aside FDP critique of her revamp of the healthcare system, which went into effect at the beginning of this year and which includes a state-managed healthcare fund which then distributes money to insurance providers. "I think their opposition will become less stiff when I explain it to them," she said breezily.

Not surprisingly, such condescension hasn't sat well with the FDP. "It remains a goal of the FDP to jettison the healthcare fund. It was a plank in our campaign platform and that is one reason we did so well in the elections," said Daniel Bahr, the FDP's healthcare expert.

There are a number of other issues as well which separate the parties ahead of negotiations. The Free Democrats would like to see the existing minimum wage agreements re-examined and barriers preventing companies from firing employees weakened -- two demands which the CDU have refused to consider. The FDP also thinks that the security policies put into place by CDU Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, which allow online computer surveillance and long-term data storage, are too severe. Bans on child-pornography Web sites are also not well-loved by the FDP, due to concerns that broader Internet bans could follow.