Former opposition whip Michael Johnson told ABC1’s Lateline he is urging his colleagues to support Mr Abbott, who he says best represents the views of the electorate on emissions trading.

Previously he had said the Liberal Party needed Mr Hockey as leader, but he has changed his mind.

“Tony Abbott’s got a very strong position which happens to coincide with my own view, and in my assessment, my electorate,” he said.

I smell a Labor win in the leafy Brisbane electorate of Ryan. From what I’ve seen of this electorate, it is not remotely Abbottesque.

Linked text</a

I’ve been aware of the prick for nearly 40 years, from back when he was a Liberal apparatchik. He’s always been a nasty piece of work.

Unless Malcolm wins on Tuesday and brings out the long knives, somehow managing to get Minchin disendorsed before next August… please, God, let it be that.

Senators are selected by State party branches.

Sadly, he doesn’t have an electorate (not like Reps members such as Messrs Turnbull, Abbott, Rudd, Swan, Tuckey, Hockey or Ms Gillard, Bishop….)

Or, more accurately his electorate is a whole State. If there’s a double dissolution, he’d need pre-selection, etc. to run again as a Liberal. I doubt that Mr Hockey could have him dumped, tempting though it may be.

I doubt that the Minchiniks will break away from the Bolshie Libs, Brendon. Too much at stake. They’ll stay in and fight…. an unedifying spectacle will ensue, IMO.

Two more truckloads of popcorn to Armidale, please.

One would reasonably expect the liberal party to pay the wages of the likes of minchin given his denial of the fact that he is a public servant.

Let us hope that his electorate now take a closer look at their representative. They may well decide that perhaps they would prefer someone who was prepared to look after them,rather than use his tax-payer funded job in the total and whole employ of the liberal party.

How can Nick Minchin stand up and say well thats cleared the air, when if anything, its made it worse for him and what he wants.

If Turnbull or Hockey win, Minchin has only one option: leave the party and start up an even more right wing party dedicated to uncovering left wing conspiracies and the return of the cat o`-nine-tails back into labour relations.

Hockey may still get up, but the Minchinites have been chucked in the bin where they belong.

But seriously, ‘the guff’ sells newspapers and so it descended like a greater heap during ‘grech-gate’ and accelerated as Copenhagen got closer… if this was not ‘guff’ then I shudder: truly, it can’t get worse can it?!!?

TONY JONES: Let’s hear from Joe Hockey. Have you ever had to come out of a Cabinet meeting or a meeting of your shadow cabinet and argue strongly for something you actually totally disagree with?

JOE HOCKEY: Yes, but I’ve never gone to the point of lying. I don’t – I was a minister for nine years in some pretty hard portfolios and I never felt the need to lie.

[...]

JOE HOCKEY: Well, you’re part of a team and what you say is “I’m part of a team. We’ll have our disagreements from time to time but I’m part of a team and I support the decision.” But I wouldn’t go out there and say, “I never said something,” or, you know, “I now believe in the absolute opposite because it’s a convenient truth.”

I guess we will see soon enough …

No amount of leadership “talent” is enough to herd startled cats. Even the prospect of electoral annihilation and irrelevance for possibly a decade has counted for nothing amongst the Minchin-Bernardi crowd. If one takes them at their word, they think they are fighting a battle to hold back the red tide and see Turnbull as a sandbagger.

Hockey won’t help them at all, because sooner or later, they will have to vote for this, or there will be a DD or maybe a regular election after August at which their numbers in both houses will be reduced them to utter irrelevance. In no variation from here is it conceivable that they won’t be fighting amongst themselves for at least the next two parliamentary terms and find themselves without a credible figure to lead them much before 2017.

The problem with the Liberals is that they have never been popular. Since the war, people have voted for them out of fear and loathing, or because of their anxieties over the economy and the hope that they could restore financial stability but nowhere near enough people like them on any issue of substance. On every issue except the economy and national security the ALP has been seen as more in tune with what most people want. When these two issues became lead in the saddle bags in 2007 and a whole swag of new younger voters entered the pool, they were in a lot of trouble.

When Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan successfully averted local economic chaos in the midst of the GFC the principal percieved ALP weakness was added to their percieved strengths, and doubly so as the remedy turned out to be a policy traditionally connected with the ALP — increased government spending — and the Liberals had little option but to put themselves at odds with a policy perceived as both successful and in keeping with the direction of policy worldwide. Inevitably, the Liberal posturing — “Labor’s Debt” — could only redound on them, and one suspects that a new wave of eligible voters in 2010 will make national securioty and border protection even less saleable as issues.

Little of that is really Malcolm Turnbull’s failing, and where it is, it is a failing of the whole party in its post-war development. He’d have had to articulate a vision explictly at odds with those favoured by the Howard-era members, and there was no way that they’d have let him do that, given the revolt we’ve seen over his (and Hockey’s) attempt to help implement a Howard-like ETS.

I’ve heard it argued that Howard’s ETS was irrelveant because had he won, it would have become a “non-core” promise. I can well believe it, but if I do, it merely underlines how utterly bankrupt and implausible attempts to fashion a coherent and substantial group of right-wing anti-ALP activists are likely to be.

People seem to have forgotten his condescending bully-boy tacitcs, his complete lack of leadership abilities, political nous and judgement, colossal ego and arrogance. He may indeed have a head crammed with brains, but he doesn’t live up to the promise he appears to have and I see no good reason to vote for him.

One off-the-cuff speech does not a political leader or potential PM make; under all the recently acquired glamour it’s still Malcolm Turnbull.

Anyway, he won’t stick around waiting his turn again; not enough limelight in that. He’ll be off looking for the next set of stage lights.

Give it time.

The Libs’ big problem is that they don’t have 12 years in opposition to make them recognise that their existing reactionary core of conservative MPs are unelectable, and that they need to move to the centre (Howard knew this, which is why he said “we’ll jump, but only when everyone else has. His acolytes didn’t learn from it of course).

If Turnbull loses tomorrow, and decides to hang around, he will likely be welcomed back as leader sometime around Labor’s third term. Then he can start the Cameronisation of the Liberal Party again – probably with the added benefit of having a Cameron UK Government.

Cheers
Alex

Ps. Thanks for the link.

Freudian slip Lefty E?

Anyway could they get much sicker?

http://larvatusprodeo.net/2009/11/30/turnbull-to-found-a-new-party/