Peter Costello’s written a bit of a spray about Tony Abbott’s parental leave scheme in The Age. Actually quite an amusing read.
I don’t know if The Great Pretender’s distaste will have that much impact in the Coalition ranks, but you’d have thought there’d be enough other reasons for Liberals to think twice about the wisdom of the Abbott experiment.
It’s been widely observed that Abbott’s business impost disables his ‘Great New Tax On Everything’ line, because – unlike Labor’s ETS, which hands out money to big business – it probably would be, as large companies pass on the tax to consumers.
I haven’t noticed anyone pointing out that the parental leave plan also contradicts the theme Abbott was developing against Rudd – that Rudd’s announcements were over ambitious and it was better to go with more incremental, smaller scale policy. This was the political logic of the ‘Direct Action’ slogan, and to my mind, it’s not a bad line of attack. But it can hardly be credibly pushed when, as Costello says, Abbott has taken the ‘my policy’s bigger than your policy’ road.
Then, there’s the fact that this ego driven strategy on Abbott’s part shifts the focus from the government back on to his own credentials and capability to be Prime Minister, which is pretty dumb opposition politics at this stage of the game. After the insulation debacle, the Liberals should have been reiterating their story about the government’s policy woes. Instead, they’re defending their own policy. Not smart.
If you like stats and maps, you should have a look at Nate Silver’s post on Sarah Palin’s chances in the primaries in 2012.
Silver doesn’t mention this explicitly, but what jumps out at me is the sheer irrationality of the primary process – so much depends on the order in which states vote and the nature of the vote (ie closed or open primary, caucus). Then there’s the unrepresentativeness of some of the states which are most important in the primaries by size and demographics, not to mention the fact that primaries tend to privilege an electorate which is closer to the ideological extreme than those voters who will actually decide the general election. All of that applies to the Democrats too, of course, but it’s unlikely they’ll have competitive Presidential primaries in 2012.
Tony Abbott appears to have taken that gospel saying about being “cunning as a serpent” to heart, if not the bit about being “gentle as a dove”. The problem with the media cycle these days for the political obfuscator is that it’s harder to say one thing to one audience and one to another – always one of the great political standbys. You can, however, get away with it, given that few people are paying attention to anything but the soundbites targeted at them – you know, the spin Abbott and co are always accusing Kevin Rudd of.
In comments on another thread, Sir Henry Casingbroke has a great summation of the new Liberal leader’s appearance on Lateline tonight, and his political tactics. The ‘base’ he appears to be aiming at is the ‘battlers’ – it’s a defensive strategy to stop further Labor gains in outer suburban and regional seats. How that will be squared with the resurrection rebadging of WorkChoices remains to be seen.
But there’s another aspect to Abbott’s strategy – one I alluded to in my Overland post (also discussed here). Ironically, opposing market solutions (albeit with something completely illusory) might, in Abbott’s mind, work wonders for the parties of the right. The denialist dog whistling and the claims that ‘warming has stopped’ are just the ideological icing on the cake:
So business as usual is popular, with the odd twist that it’s now the political right who oppose market solutions. But Tony Abbott may be onto something; he’s playing to the politics of a vague desire that ‘something be done’. Install a solar panel, and forget about it – the state will sort it out. It won’t happen, but it has an appeal above and beyond market solutions which by necessity create winners and losers, and precisely the uncertainty and fear that most would rather wish away.
The federal Liberals are sounding and thinking a lot more like the Nats than a week ago…
There’s an interesting debate (so far one sided) between Possum and Andrew Norton on the question of Malcolm Turnbull’s and the opposition’s prospects. Possum, after making a statistically derived argument about what factors drive voting, suggests that Malcolm Turnbull’s only strategy is “constant negative harping”.
Norton disagrees, and something like his position has been put to me recently from another quarter, so I suspect he’s accurately portraying what the opposition think they’re up to:
Simply agreeing with what the government is doing will get the Opposition minimal current credit with the electorate in the short term at the price of a clear long-term message about the Liberal alternative. There is a difference between what Liberal state oppositions have done, which is just ‘constant negative harping’ without a real theme or sense of an alternative, and a strategy which goes against the current mood to establish a message that could resonate at a later time.
There are at least two problems with this.
First, I’m not at all clear that any political alternative is being argued – some musing about ‘Liberal values’ is pretty content free, and doesn’t cut through in any case. Kevin Rudd has framed what the Liberal party stands for at the moment. So pervasive is the ‘back to Howard’ narrative. The Libs have played into this with their obsession with ‘defending the legacy’. It’s backward looking, not carving out some positive territory for a future when Labor goes off the boil. There’s really no getting around the fact that there’s just no political contest whatever at the moment – the Libs may as well be on Rudd’s payroll, as someone remarked here recently.
Secondly, you have to pick your battles in politics. Continue reading ‘Does Turnbull have a (viable) political strategy (at all)?’
Various newspapers described Queensland Treasurer Andrew Fraser’s budget outlook review on Friday as providing a “trigger” for an impending poll. That’s something of a misleading formulation. But the budget position does give state Labor – perhaps paradoxically – a political theme to develop and run on.
The Labor Party won’t want issues such as health, which remind voters that it’s had eleven years in office, to be central to the campaign.
Rather, the ALP will want to differentiate its economic approach from the LNP’s. Anna Bligh will be arguing that the state government is doing all it can to kickstart the slowing economy – an argument previewed by Fraser when he pointedly observed that the government had chosen to continue to borrow for infrastructure spending rather than cut its borrowing cloth to the demands of Standard and Poor’s. Jobs above all else was the message.
Graham Young’s polling for the National Forum shows infrastructure still in first place among voter concerns, but the economy rocking up the charts. There’s an obvious connection to be made between the two issues, and the Borg’s constant mantra about debt and the evils thereof boxes the LNP in and prevents them from making big ticket announcements. If they do, they’re destroying their own claims about public debt, and suggesting there’s tons of interest at the moment in public-private partnerships is hardly going to be credible in this economic climate. Labor ends up with a twin focus on the economy and leadership, and it’s hard to see this favouring the opposition. From the point of view of where governments’ political support goes when put to the test in an economic downturn, this will be an interesting campaign.
Continue reading ‘The impending Queensland election and the state of the debt’
[I'm borrowing the pun from Michael Bérubé]
In the absence of any more “game changing” impulsive madness from Walnuts, all eyes will probably be on the Veeps debate on Friday – although our friends in the House Republicans or more spectacular crashes on Wall Street might diminish the focus a tad. Sarah Palin won’t be able to pull a McCain though, and “suspend” her campaign, after that trick spectacularly failed as Walnuts slunk out of Washington calling for bipartisanship on one hand while slagging off Obama on the other, after fairly poor reviews of whatever contribution he may have made to the crisis from his fellow Republicans. Nor will Palin be dropped from the ticket – I think (presuming there’s any rationality to the McCain strategy). As Nate Silver observes, there are at least three good reasons why it would be dumb (but again, I’m thinking dumb is the name of the McCain game). And the last time a Veep candidate was dumped – Thomas Eagleton in 72 – McGovern dropped 7 points in the polls.
Anyway, that’s that for the moment, but in this increasingly bizarre campaign which in true postmodern style seems to have as fictive a relationship to the real world as all that fictitious capital swirling around Wall Street waiting for the government to buy it, who knows what lies ahead, or even what lies lie ahead. My main purpose in posting was to draw attention to two excellent pieces from two of my favourite Stateside online writers on the bizarre phenomenon that is the Palin pick, something I continue to believe deserves more analysis than just political calculation or the desire to diss implies.
Continue reading ‘Welcome to the Palindrome!’
Tony Abbott trotted out the line on Q&A tonight that the ALP is scared of Malcolm Turnbull, hence the attack on him. This meme – which I think originated with the claims that the government were trembling in their collective boots at the spectre of Peter Costello becoming Opposition Leader – is dumb. It was hardly worth going after Brendan Nelson – he did a good enough job on himself. But what politicians do is attack their opponents. It’s hardly rocket science.
So what’s Labor up to? A lot of it has to do with Turnbull’s persona. As Kim observed the other day, Turnbull won’t be anywhere near as well known among the general public as he is among political junkies. When there’s so much attention on him, you get in quick to define his persona. The line has already morphed – from rich dude to out of touch Eastern suburbs silvertail who represents, you know, latte sippers and Sydney Morning Herald readers. Which, after all, he does. “Vaucluse”, “Point Piper”, and “Western suburbs” (by way of contrast) are words carrying huge symbolic weight. It’s a tie in with the “right to drive a Porsche” jibes and will be a better fit with Turnbull than with truckin’ Brendan.
Turnbull’s possibly doing himself no favours by talking about himself so much, a point that a conga line of Ministers have made. It’s the downside of having to define yourself. To the degree that Turnbull does have an image as egotistical and arrogant, he reinforces that by dwelling on his own qualities. And the press does part of the job for the ALP by writing about him in terms of his stellar intellect, heroic qualities, his temper and “inability to tolerate fools”, blah blah. If there’s one image that Australian voters don’t like, it’s of someone with tickets on themselves and a sense of entitlement. Just ask Peter Costello.
Thirdly, while the press may have been suggesting Turbull is some sort of “crazy brave” choice and will provide sparks and excitement, that’s probably a negative. Continue reading ‘Labor’s game plan for Malcolm Turnbull’
Although aspects of his critique are tentatively sketched by his own admission, Jay Rosen has hit more nails than he’s missed with his analysis of the significance of the Sarah Palin veep selection by the McCain campaign. Rosen’s article is rightly getting a lot of attention. It’s “personalities, not issues” as McCain’s campaign manager Rick Davis said, and the dark divisive arts of Karl Rove are being revived for the umpteenth time, and to date, are apparently working. Though in an somewhat problematic article in Salon, problematic because of the gender stereotypes it re-enacts while purportedly criticising them, Gary Kamiya provides some hope for thinking the Democrats might turn things around. But the controversy over Palin’s claims to have opposed the infamous “bridge to nowhere” illustrates the double bind the GOP have the Democrats in.
At least the turf this issue – the purported opposition to earmarks and pork that Palin is supposed to share with McCain – is being fought over is a public policy issue rather than all the personalised stuff which just puts the Democrats and the media where the GOP want them. But Obama’s reluctance to use the words “lies” and “liars” shows he knows the score. He’s being criticised for that by liberal bloggers, who are cheering on the media “fact checking” exercise.
But all this truthiness is also at great risk of playing into the GOP’s hands – because it reinforces the equation of the media and blogosphere with the Democrats Rosen identified as the tactical positioning the Republicans want – and which George W. Bush reinforced with his claims about “the angry left” in his RNC video link. The culture wars schtick works – because the America of Wal-Marts and small town “values” has more electoral power in the swing states that count than the wonky redoubts of the blue staters. And a lot of those voters – who don’t source their news from the internet but from cable tv – and get their analysis from others of like mind in their own circles rather than bloggers, commentators and wonks – are seeing what McCain wants them to see – a feisty outsider being beaten up by the Beltway elite. Hence McCain’s polling gains, among other demographics, with white women.
Continue reading ‘McCain: Gaming the media and the blogosphere’
Breaking the CPRS deadlock
Almost two weeks ago, I suggested that something positive might come of The Greens’ suggestion that Ross Garnaut’s interim measure on carbon emissions should be the circuit breaker for the CPRS impasse.
In the intervening period, I’ve been surprised that so little attention has been paid to the negotiations between Senator Penny Wong and Senator Christine Milne on behalf of The Greens, which began last week. I’ve sought to emphasise that there are possibilities of Senate passage via a Liberal floor crosser (perhaps Judith Troeth, who is retiring) and Nick Xenophon. In any event, I’ve argued that there are political benefits for Labor in staking out a new position which could demonstrate the desire for immediate action, and perhaps take a different bill to a double dissolution.
Perhaps it’s inevitable that the media would ignore these developments, but I’ve also been surprised at the attitude of a number of commenters on several threads, which seems to assume that Labor’s posture is somehow frozen in stone.
So, in light of all this, I was very interested indeed to hear Bob Brown give a very articulate and well argued interview to Tony Jones on Lateline tonight where he discussed these negotiations, and revealed that he had also been talking to other non-Government Senators.