By Mark Bahnisch
Over the weekend, I read Annabel Crabb’s Rise of the Ruddbot.
It’s fascinating to take a trip back to a time when a Liberal leadership team of Tony Abbott and Julie Bishop seemed fanciful. Just as much as it’s weird to go back and read right wing columnists opining in the 2007 election campaign that if we voted for Kevin07, we’d really get Julia Gillard as PM some time in the parliament’s term.
Funny business, politics.
Reading Crabb’s account of Malcolm Turnbull’s fighting press conference as his leadership crumbled, I was struck by how so many of us citizens (and so many Liberals) thought we’d be seeing his warnings that the party he led risked becoming a “right wing fringe outfit” endlessly portrayed in Labor ads. Up until very recently, the default ALP advertising gambit would have been to feature vision of successive Liberal leaders and wannabes and has-beens all trashing each other gleefully.
But we’re not seeing those ads, and for an obvious reason.
In an era of short memories, the retooling of the Ruddbot as KRuddMP has enabled the Liberals to claim that their party represents experience and safety (although Bronwyn Bishop, Kevin Andrews and Philip Ruddock, notable Howard era returnees, don’t seem to feature in their campaign).
There’s more than one irony in the way both parties are trying to position themselves on the right side of the fear/security dichotomy in this campaign.
Cross-posted at the ABC’s Campaign Diary blog.
Today I just read Robert Manne’s ‘Monthly’ piece about the collapse of Rudd’s prime ministerial spine/success/approval ratings. It was written before the leadership change, and yet it gets everything right. And there is no personal baggage in it ala the Marr essay.
Mark, old Bob mightn’t be a wordship like taxpayer funded Crabb is, but is there really any point in buying a book with ‘Ruddbot’ in the title?
(Annabel Crabb reads to me like Christian Kerr without the need for anger management. That’s the only positive thing I can say about her.)
It’s a neat read, Nick and quite a useful way of reviewing the term.
Has anybody read “Shitstorm”. Is it better than the title (which wouldn’t be hard).
It’s alright. Good if you want a narrative of what happened during the GFC and the decision making process. Not really a page turner, or full of any stunning revelations.
Can we spot hypocrisy when we see it?
That is what The Blowfly ponders.
The Liberals attempt to portray the demise of Rudd as abhorrent to the electorate is so pitiful it is laughable.
Why dont politicians see their hypocrisy?
The Coalition let Howard go on for too long and it cost them.
Now they lay into Labor for being too efficient at ‘succession planning’.
One of the good laughs of the campaign.