I certainly agree in the sense that if we change some attributes of a 'younger Social Democratic woman' (like the current Danish or Finnish Prime Ministers) to those of, say, an 'older Christian Democratic woman', you still end up with someone as damaging as Merkel. I don't even like Marine Le Pen that much, though she's leagues ahead of the aforementioned politicians.

In some ways, Merkel is even worse than the first two. For example, at least they don't actively try to convince people that they're aren't Leftists. Nor do they corrupt conservative parties—the German CDU literally now calls itself 'The Centre'; yep, it is no longer a party of the Right by its own admission. It is Merkel who is responsible for these changes. If Merkel was gone, the CDU could become a proper paleoconservative party, more like the 'far-right' (hah...) AfD, who were effectively the CDU of a few decades ago in terms of policies. Whereas if Marin or Frederiksen were gone, well, what would change given that they would only be succeeded by like-minded Social Democrats? It is borderline impossible for such parties to ever become paleocon, nationalistic or otherwise move anywhere near our position. Whereas at least centre-right party leaders like Wauquiez and Casado moved their parties closer to our position, even if it is just because of the rising popularity of RN and Vox in France and Spain respectively.

Of course, Le Pen's RN is also practically the French centre-right of the 90's anyway (as some have observed, Chirac's platform was highly similar to RN's current one). So it is not only Merkel and the CDU who are doing this, but also vermin like Sarkozy.