You said:

This is the end of The Party that Ratty Made.

It is important to recall how Ratty made his party — by means of back-stabbing and faction-driven branch-stacking. Standing on a pile of political corpses…

Your quote summarizes an argument in the paper “‘You lucky, lucky bastard!’. The Extent Of John Howard’s Political Genius.’ by Wayne Errington and Peter van Onselen. It was presented at the John Howard Decade Conference at ANU in March 2006. An extract appears on-line under the far less spicy title of ‘Howard The Ideologue’.

Errington and van Onselen wrote:

While [Howard's championing of the ideological right] doesn’t seem to have done much harm in terms of the harmony and discipline of the party in government, a less successful federal Liberal Party may reap the whirlwind of the divisive practices of the Howard years.

And further:

The extent of damage caused by Howard’s factional warfare will only be known well after he has retired, and will likely cause some reassessment of his political skills

Surveying the Liberal Party in advanced factional rabble mode must be causing Errington and van Onselen to emit quite a glow of professional satisfaction as their predictions settle nicely into history, and Howard himself must be getting severe indigestion as he quaffs the case of complimentary Claret from the American Enterprise Institute and wonders how to blame somebody else (that Minchin perhaps) for the ruin now unfolding.

I blogged it here

Really? I’d love to see that. Hell — it might even vote for them in such circumstances

The ETS boondoggle is as anathematic to the party of economic rationalism as WorkChoices was to the party of unionism. You might think either is a good idea, but you’re probably in the wrong party if you do.

The blogosphere is full of commenters saying more or less precisely this.

Yet it appears that either a large minority or a small minority of Liberal Party parliamentarians disagree with this. These parliamentarians are political operators whose primary function is to survive the hurly burly of party politics with its faction fights, its pre-selection struggles, its political knifings and its ultimate purpose of getting 50% plus one vote of the TPP ticked in their column on the ballot paper.

Why do the rightist commenters on the blogosphere think they know more about these games than the professional practitioners of it whom they so roundly criticise?

And on a related theme, it is clear that Liberal senators are disproportionately represented among the deniers and the anti-Turnbullites. Could it be that these rebels, either coming from smaller states and/or not immediately answerable to the voters of a specific electorate, do not feel the heat of popular support for some sort of genuine action on AGW? Thus these anti-Turnbullite rebels feel they can oppose with impunity.

Whereas, members of the H of R are overwhelmingly from the suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne — educated, middle-class electorates. It is the disposition of these electorates that determines which party wins government. (Have the Right already forgotten what happened to their little hero John Howard in leafy Bennelong?

The Right appears to be prepared to alienate these folks living in the leafy suburbs of our two greatest cities in a quixotic quest for ideological purity.

That’s true about Victorian ALP. My point was merely that
i) internecine warfare
ii) consequent electoral failure, and
iii) die-hard, tiny minority hijackings of major parties
are none of them the exclusive preserve or playground of right wing dingbats. Some posters seemed to be suggesting it’s only the far right that’s populated by the loopy.

Never was, never will be.

BTW (others), to say that Viscount Turnbull “declared nuclear war on his Party opponents” is a little unfair, considering that his Senate leader Sen. Minchin tossed a grenade publicly by saying that even if a compromise were reached, the Libs might not vote for an amended ETS.

They may not, ultimately, but that was disloyalty and bastardry of the highest order, Senator. Has any previous Liberal Senate leader acted in similar fashion?

Trying to win an election on a “climate change doesn’t exist” policy is about as likely to work as Labor getting to the next election with a policy of “the socialisation of industry, production, distribution and exchange.”

BTW, this will be Labor’s policy at the next election. It’s exactly what the ETS is.