The boys get smacked. But one who was caned and expelled at least looks on in glee as the rest take their just revenge. Indeed the very same 'faceless men' who egged Julia on to stab him in the back when he was the PM.
As young Andrew was saying just this morning before rushing off to do his TV thing (No, not dressing in his sister's clothes), Julia Gillard has turned Australians against each other as a deliberate and despicable campaign tactic.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/
Whatever happened to the Feminist Promise that women in politics would bring conflict resolution, nurturing, empathy, truth, caring-sharing, even communication?
Ju-Liar tried to turn women against men, the poor against “greedy” miners, unionists against bosses, workers against foreign labor. She has played the gender card and stirred up anti-Catholic bigotry.
Her staff deliberately whipped up a mini race riot against Tony Abbott on Australia Day last year.
This divisiveness - the bitterness, the anger,
the abuse -
has helped to lower the stature of the
Prime Minister.
It has also exposed Gillard to abuse herself. For instance, by turning women voters against men, she has invited an inevitable retribution. That does not condone the sexist nature of some of that blow-back to her own appeals to sexism, but does suggest she has recklessly played with fire.
Gillard has even tried to exploit the fury she’s helped to unleash to portray herself not as the Prime Minister but the Prime Victim. She is offering herself as not a symbol of unity but of division.
See how I’m picked on, she cries.
Vote for my wounds.
Vote against those who inflicted them.
Some feminists of the Left suggest Gillard is proof that sexism is rampant because the hatred of her is so wide and so vehement. They might have a point if it were not that Gillard has not just provoked that anger by her deceits and incompetence, but has cultivated it by stoking hatreds herself.
It is not just the Federal Government that will reap the harvest of discontent.
THE Labor Party will be obliterated by Tasmanian voters at the September federal election and stands a good chance of losing every Lower House seat it holds in the state, according to exclusive polling conducted for the Mercury.
A ReachTEL poll of more than 2600 voters conducted on Thursday night points to a 17.6 per cent swing against Labor and a 6.3 per cent swing against the Greens.
In one of the most extensive political opinion polls conducted in Tasmania, the results predict Labor's primary vote will fall from the 43.9 per cent recorded statewide at the 2010 federal election to just 26.3 per cent, and the Liberal party's primary vote will surge from 33.6 per cent to 45.5 per cent.
The polling does not bode well for the State Government.
We won’t know if the public is too sexist to accept a female Prime Minister until we get one who is competent and determined to unite us.
Peter Hartcher says a panicked Gillard has once more tried to win by dividing Australians - this week by claiming Abbott would threaten the right to abortion:
It makes her the first prime minister since the ill-fated Billy McMahon in 1972 to introduce abortion into an election campaign…
The persistent theme that the government has pursued, however, and held on to as a political tactic, is divisiveness.
Unable to unite the country, Gillard is specialising in dividing it.
The government sought to divide workers from the wealthy in the hope of winning the affections of the workers. It demonised foreign workers on 457 visas in the hope of winning the votes of local workers. The Prime Minister attacked misogynists and men in blue ties in the hope of winning the support of women over men…
But the attempt to exploit abortion took Gillard into a league of political desperation unseen since McMahon… Neither main party has any intention of changing the status quo. It is a settled matter.... It is merely posturing and innuendo by Gillard in an attempt to create a fear campaign…
Rodney Cavalier, a Labor historian and former NSW minister, ... was so ashamed of Gillard’s blatant opportunism that he sent his commentary for publication…
“The nation’s present Prime Minister has been reckless in raising an issue that will end in grief for women and men who believe in a woman’s right to choose, if ever the party political support for abortion should be put to the test… Only an opportunist bereft of all hope would want to provoke a test vote for outlawing what is well settled.”
What makes Gillard’s tactics unforgivable is that a leader should unite, not dangerously divide.
What makes them so stupid is that no one really wants to be led by a victim. No one really votes out of sympathy. Gough Whitlam played the victim, too, in 1975 and 1977, to much applause from the sympathetic. Yet he led his party to two terrible defeats.
In the end, no Prime Minister is a victim. Not by definition. And certainly not by the inclination of the voters. After all, victims are weak. And some victims are just symbols of a grievance which divides.
Paul Kelly says
Gillard’s misogyny speech of October 9, 2012, was a political electric current that energised her supporters, but its enduring impact is highly equivocal. Its unleashed passion made her a more interesting figure. Yet from the June 2013 perspective such passion has not brought fresh votes to Labor. The speech is a feminist icon; but it has not helped Gillard.
On the contrary, it has entrenched views of Gillard as a polarising leader prepared to play gender politics. That is a negative.
Chris Kenny says:
History will judge Gillard harshly for her part in the deliberate divisiveness we have seen through the Australia Day fracas, the misogyny rant, the resort to class warfare and, now, astoundingly, an attempted abortion debate.
Wherever there has been cohesion and bipartisanship, she has attempted to insert a wedge.
Julia Gillard loses the protection of the Australian Workers Union:
“The AWU continues to support Julia Gillard and we believe it is in the best interests of the movement to remain united behind the Prime Minister,” AWU national secretary Paul Howes told The Weekend Australian.
But the key national union leader and influential Labor Right figure says the union will not be directing any MPs to support Ms Gillard in any caucus ballot.
“...How MPs vote in a leadership ballot is up to them.”
The comments by Mr Howes, who appeared on national television on the night of the coup against Mr Rudd urging he be replaced by Ms Gillard, come as Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten - a key AWU parliamentary figure - is seen as pivotal to Ms Gillard’s fortunes.
One western Sydney MP - a Rudd supporter - calls for Gillard to quit:
“I believe it is now in the interests of the Australian Labor Party for the Prime Minister to stand down and for Mr Rudd to lead us to the next election,” said [John] Murphy, the member for Reid.
Paul Kelly tells us that Senior cabinet ministers have told Inquirer there is a sense of inevitability about a leadership change. The statements to this paper by Australian Workers Union chief Paul Howes constitute a tacit surrender from within Gillard’s power base.
Tony Abbott was preferred prime minister among 64 per cent of voters compared with 36 per cent for Ms Gillard. The Opposition Leader led Mr Rudd 52 per cent to 48 per cent.
In fact, ReachTEL detects a fall in support for Rudd in western Sydney over the past three months:
But under Gillard, a complete wipeout:
A ReachTEL poll of more than 2600 [Tasmanian] voters… points to a 17.6 per cent swing against Labor and a 6.3 per cent swing against the Greens.
The seats of Bass, Braddon and Lyons will be won easily by Liberal candidates… Independent Andrew Wilkie is likely to be returned in the seat of Denison...
Peter Hartcher says Gillard’s decision to announce a September election in January triggered the landslide:
In the 19 weeks since she announced the date, the opinion polls suggest an electorate locked into a grim and fixed determination to remove the government.
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