In Part One, I offered a brief re-telling of the past two years of Liberal party chaos. Here in Part Two, I revel in the basic schizophrenia of contemporary Conservatism. There's also a largely unrelated video of drunken Russians and a photo of Tony Abbott in Speedos. It's... quite the sight.
Richard M. Nixon has never really received the best rap over the years. Warmongering, vindictive and eventually just a flat-out cheater, his heritage as the US' Presidential villian extraordinaire went essentially unchallenged until Dubya rode into town 30 years later on the intellectual equivalent of a one-legged donkey. With a dodgy heart. And a failing liver. And a really unsightly skin rash. However, one of Tricky Dick's more overlooked accomplishments was his large-scale reformation of the Conservative political base. Previously, the left and right sides of the political spectrum could always be loosely drawn on a poor vs. rich dynamic. The poor wanted society to change so that they could become rich, while the rich wanted society to stay the same so that they could continue to enjoy the many fruits of the poor. Like chauffer-driven cars, non-stop garden parties and slaves. What an age.
But what Nixon managed to identify was that many of those poor people weren't actually educated all that well, and were thus open to fear campaigns waged around social wedge issues, such as hippies, homosexuality and the Russians.
Terrifying. The ensuing campaign wasn't a pretty sight, but it was a political masterstroke - in one fell swoop, Nixon managed to convince a massive proportion of the electorate to vote for a party who by and large had no interest in them whatsoever. Beyond the continued ability of the poor to provide them with cheap, effective manual labour. Seeing its gigantic success in the US (in his second election, Nixon won 49 of the 50 states), this trend swept through Conservative movements around the world. Although, as we are wont to do, it did take Australia a few decades to properly jump on the bandwagon. Which we finally did in the form of our second-longest serving Prime Minister, John Howard, a man who over the course of a decade purged from the Liberal party any memory they ever had of being socially progressive i.e. liberal.
The problem is that, well, Nixon's plan was a little short-sighted. Because, when it comes down to it, there's really not all that much that the rich and poor have in common, and sooner or later they're going to start getting pretty pissed off about the fact that the other insists on sleeping in their bed. They're kinda like the original odd couple. Except not all that funny. More just a bit racist.
The tensions surrounding the McCain-Palin ticket in last year's US Presidential election were a pretty striking example of the difficulties being faced by the contemporary Conservative movement. The past week's worth of bloody Liberal in-fighting is another. Turnbull represented the long silent minority of socially progressive 'wet' Liberals, a faction of the party that had been almost entirely quashed during Howard's tenure but now saw new life in the electorate's withdrawal from Howard-style high Conservatism. Conversely, Abbott represents the 'dry' side of the equation, the side that held the balance of power during Howard's tenure, but still appears to hold a flat majority in the party room. Hence the fact that Abbott, widely regarded as unelectable, unfriendly and king of the cock jocks has stumbled his way into power.
Now, I'm generally left leaning, so this strikes me as the best possible turn of events for vaguely progressive politics in Australia in the short to medium term future. However, even without any consideration of my political standpoint, or even the basic validity of the ETS itself, I think this entire episode suggests that times are going to be a little tough for the Liberals over the next few years. A Palin Presidential campaign this ain't - the actual political
divisions in Australia are far more fuzzily drawn - but there is still a major
capacity for ongoing ructions within the Liberals, especially if Abbott
proves to be as 'popular' with the electorate as is currently feared. Bob Hawke summarised it with
a single word when asked what kind of leader he thought Abbott would be: "temporary".
And, let's be frank, public political executions don't look good at the best of times, but when these executions come in the context of an increasingly irreconcilable rift that appears to lie at the core of the party's ideology - and, more importantly, its voting base - they don't just look bad, they look like one of those needlessly elaborate inescapable mutual death setups so beloved of the
Saw franchise. And that just hit its sixth instalment, with a seventh due to drop next year. Right in time for the next election. With the ETS hanging over their heads like a counter-levered guillotine that can only be escaped if you eat the person to whom it's been counter-levered.
Just call K-Rudd 'Jigsaw'.