Right Pulse

I think MT still needs a bit more time in the hot seat, but if the polls have not turned around 10 months from the election, Abbott should have a go. From the Spectator Australia:

As well as being the coalition’s parliamentary ‘enforcer’ as Leader of the House, Abbott was the former government’s intellectual in residence, churning out fortnightly articles for the Sydney Morning Herald, debating Julia Gillard every Friday morning on the Today programme, and giving numerous scripted speeches prosecuting the conservative side of the culture wars. Unlike a great many parliamentarians, Abbott is actually committed to core principles and values.

That would distinguish him from Rudd, who is like a schizophrenic actor in a multi-part play.

I’d previously weighed into US Republican politics by arguing that Romney would be a better pick than Palin at the next Presidential election because, unlike Palin, Romney has intellectually prepared himself to lead as President and win arguments for conservatives. Highly respected media commentator Charles Krauthammer recently expressed similar sentiments:

Romney really is the frontrunner. He has done himself well. He is a grown-up. He knows economics. He’s trusted on that.

Under any normal circumstance that would not be much of a complement, but given that Obama is in power, it speaks volumes of Obama’s own inadequacies and those of Romney’s rivals.

…he is the guy who is as clean as clean can get. You are not going to wake up in the morning and discover he is crying in Argentina. This is a solid guy and he’s got a record.

A reference to former Presidential hopeful and current Governor of South Carolina’s secret visit to his mistress in Argentina. No ’nasties’ in the closet. Predictable and dependable. On Palin:

…she is not a serious candidate for the presidency.

She had to go home and study and spend a lot of time on issues in which she was not adept last year, and she hasn’t. She has to stop speaking in clichés and platitudes. It won’t work….You cannot sustain a campaign of platitudes and clichés over a year and a half if you’re running for the presidency.

All feathers, no meat.

UPDATE I

More from the WSJ on why MR is becoming the defacto opposition leader o take on Obama:

…Govs. Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal and Mark Sanford, and Sen. John Ensign — have stumbled or, in the case of Gov. Sanford, flamed out in spectacular fashion. Mitt Romney now looks by comparison like the serious adult in the room…the national agenda is squarely focused on the economy — which plays to Mr. Romney’s strength as a successful businessman…the auto industry, which happens to play nicely to the Romney background as a Michigander and son of an auto-company executive. The other is health care, which tees up Mr. Romney to talk about the health overhaul he led in Massachusetts while that state’s governor….Mr. Romney’s political action committee endorsed 84 Republican candidates for federal office and passed out more than $400,000 in contributions, while Mr. Romney appeared at 34 campaign events for Republican congressional candidates.

I don’t see America’s economic woes going away in four years, and the Federal budget will likely be in an even bigger mess than it is now. So MR will still be relevant by then. However, I don’t understand a political system that does not have a single unifying voice - like an opposition leader - to take on the incumbent throughout the term of office. Waiting until just at the tail end of the term - when an election becomes eminent - to figure out how to attack the incumbent does not make much sense. The opposition needs to be taking small bites out of the other guys throughout the four years as part of a unified strategy to win, and try as best as possible to put aside intra-party rivalry. In otherwords, accept for the time being that MR is the guy to take on Obama at the next election.

Then there is this damning essay about Palin, written by National Review editor-at-large Jonah Goldberg:

…every time I see you on TV, you’re whining about unfair press coverage. Don’t get me wrong: Much of it is unfair, and some of it deserves a response. But it’s not presidential. It’s not even gubernatorial…peddling a few platitudes and truisms about free markets and limited government is no substitute for really knowing what you’re talking about. Yes, you can talk well about the stuff you know — oil drilling, energy, etc. — but beyond your comfort zone, you fall back on bumper-sticker language that sounds fine to the people who already agree with you but is useless in winning over skeptics.

Which might help explain why recent Pew polling indicated that just as many people disapprove of Palin as approve of her.

A fairly damning assessment of Rudd’s 24 news spin cycle tactics from former adviser to the Small Business Minister, Craig Emerson:

…he is trapped by his opposition policy agenda established in times of irrational exuberance.

It began when Kevin07 challenged John Howard with anti-market measures that grabbed attention on the nightly news and won him favour on Seven’s Sunrise. This was sometimes referred to as “scab flicking” politics. An issue would be raised, hence the scab. It would bleed from the politicisation, hence the flicking. Then there would be a call for an inquiry to indicate some action. This was the Rudd office playbook 101 for opposition. The Rudd opposition mercilessly used the politics of scab flicking on areas as varied as demonising Australian Workplace Agreements, using the navy to protect whales, green power schemes and, most explicitly, the cost of living facing working families.

Yet the sentiment scab flicking stirred up and the market interventions it has created will increase unemployment.

It seems the ALP right is turning against Rudd, who apparently stopped attending factional meetings when he was in opposition. Michael Costa deals with one of the products of Rudd’s 24/7 Sunrise news spin cycle:

The failure of Grocery Choice will, for political purposes, no doubt be blamed on the major supermarket chains. The reality is that with or without the co-operation of these supermarket chains, this was a ham-fisted way to address retail competition.

Rudd does govern like those bunch in-bred clowns on Sunrise. Paul Keating has also taken a swipe at Rudd’s defence policy, putting on his typically Asian apologetic hat to accuse Rudd of basically being anti-China. That claim is a bit rich. If Rudd is anti-China, then I wonder what he would be as Keating styled China apologist.

One of the reasons Howard was so respected in Asia, apart from all the cheap loans he made to the region, was that he didn’t bow down to Asian leaders like Keating used to. Keating used to chase Asian leaders like a fanatical obsessed fan following their favourite Hollywood star around the world. After a while it just became weird and annoying. Rudd has not really found a coherent Asian policy yet, or at least one that everyone understands. Remember his Asian EU style policy statement? What ever happend to that? And he seems to be coming and going on China. Between Keating, Rudd and Howard, undoubtedly the most successful leader in Asia was Howard.

A no clearer example on how the ABC turns a positive story into a negative narrative, under the headline: “Bishop defends secret Afghan trip.” Defend against who exactly?

…visits to war zones by Australian political leaders are only revealed when the politicians leave the area.

It meant Ms Bishop and Mr Turnbull’s absence was unexplained while questions were still being asked about the OzCar affair.

But she says it was unavoidable.

“It was planned for some months in advance and we of course, for security reasons, could not say we were going into Afghanistan,” she said.

Notice how the protagonist is not named. It’s called inventing a controversy when one does not exist. A tactic the ABC has mastered, by framing every story about the Coalition in the negative.

The government has released the new Defence Capability Plan, which is basically a military equipment capital acquisition programme.

The five most strategically significant projects detailed in this year’s document are the F-35 JSF, the future submarine, the defence force’s new battlespace communications, replacement field vehicles for the army and patrol boats for the navy.

Add to that a squadron of quasi-bombers in the Boeing 737 maritime patrol aircraft. I’d like to echo recent sentiments expressed in letters to the UK’s Daily Telegraph about the UK’s Defence spending programmes:

The Armed Forces make better use of public funds than many a wasteful scheme…The real problem is profligate spending on a myriad public-funded schemes, many of which have wasted billions of pounds and achieved nothing.

I can think of every ‘watch’ programme that Rudd has come up with since his election, the Human Rights Commission, the ABC, SBS (look how they have ruined Top Gear Australia), the $42 billion ’stimulus’ package including the provision of a $900 ‘tax-bonus’ to people that don’t even pay Federal taxes, the $14.2 billion education slush fund used to keep the CFMEU employed building multi-million dollar tin school sheds, the $100 billion + National Broadband Network, which is a sub-prime crisis in the making, etc… The worst Defence critics have come up over the last twenty years has been the $1.5 billion Super Seasprite project, that was cancelled because of contractual non-compliance due to a range of technical problems, and Defence turning against its former Minister Joel Fitzgibbon, because he couldn’t look past his pinko commie tendencies to manage his department in a professional manner.

Alan Jones had an effective rant yesterday about the failure of three of Rudd’s highest profile initatives: bank, fuel and grocery watch. The NAB reported that only two people had ever used Rudd’s bank watch to transfer their accounts between banks. He also highlighted the groupie mentality of the Canberra press gallery, as also pointed out by the Australian:

…last August, aided and abetted by a gullible media ever ready to follow the government’s populist line, then consumer affairs minister Chris Bowen announced “a dedicated website that gives consumers a snapshot of local grocery prices”. The Australian was sceptical, noting shoppers would find that Grocery Watch, as it was then called, did nothing of the sort, and provided less detail than the specials pages of local newspapers. The government’s journalist groupies, however, welcomed it as eagerly as bargain hunters rushing a sale.

Rudd said at the last election that he and his government mates were here to help. Ronald Reagan once said that they were the worst words in the English language. I think people would generally agree with Reagan. Most people don’t look to government to solve their problems, and if they do, Rudd’s three watch initiatives have probably turned into a good teaching moment for them. Government programmes can’t solve people’s personal financial problems. The left claim to have good intentions, but they always ignore outcomes.

Never in living memory has a PM and a government promised so much but delivered so little. Add to the list the following item. Rudd said on May 25th 2009 in relation to May NSW floods:

Today the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs also activated the Australian Government Disaster Recovery Payment to provide further assistance to help those in northern New South Wales affected by the flood disaster…I have also today authorised this assistance for people affected by the earlier floods in New South Wales in late March (emphasis added).

However the day after, as pointed out by Akerman, Rudd’s office advised the local member that:

…contrary to what the PM had said on Monday, the victims of the March 31 flood would not be eligible for the one-off cash payment, only those affected by the May event.

So March now means May? Don’t tell me Rudd misled Parliament. What about his integrity? Clearly none of the flood victims own a Ford car dealership.

Thanks to Rudd’s soft immigration policies introduced in August 2008:

A MASSIVE influx of up to 10,000 refugees is expected to head to Australia, Indonesian authorities have warned…Coordinator of the Malaysian immigration support group Tenaganita, Aegile Fernandez agreed that up to 10,000 asylum seekers in Malaysia were planning to come to Australia.

MT should harden-up on illegal immigration and use it as a way of getting some credibility back into his leadership. How many more people will have to die before Canberra gets the message about people smuggling? 25 people have already died since softened immigration laws and procedures were introduced by Rudd. These deaths only include those between Indonesia and Australia. 19 more illegal immigrants recently drowned off the Malaysian coast as they tried to make their way to Australia via Indonesia. So that’s 44 people so far lured to their deaths because of Rudd.

Rudd’s new policies also have the potential of getting the country off-side with Malaysia and Indonesia:

Datuk Wira Abu Seman Yusop yesterday slammed as unjustified the United States government’s decision to put Malaysia back on a human trafficking blacklist.

The deputy home minister said it was not true that the Malaysian government had not done enough to curb human trafficking as it had, in 2007, gazetted the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act.

Malaysia should blame Rudd. Why should Malaysia and Indonesia have to bear the brunt of Rudd’s irresponsible policies?

In Australia:

There are now only eight AA-rated banks in the world, and the Australian domestic brand names of CBA, NAB, ANZ and Westpac account for half.

Before the financial crisis engulfed the world there were 20 AA-banks.

The robust state of Australia’s banking system has been applauded globally and used as a benchmark for regulatory reform.

In China:

China’s banks are veering out of control. The half-reformed economy of the People’s Republic cannot absorb the $1,000bn (£600bn) blitz of new lending issued since December.

Money is leaking instead into Shanghai’s stock casino, or being used to keep bankrupt builders on life support. It is doing very little to help lift the world economy out of slump.

China’s resort to speculation, protectionism, quasi-price controls and depreciation of its currency are hardly signs of a competitive economy. More like a fairly desperate attempt to avoid market and political reforms.

Senator Steve Fielding. That’s right. His stand against the media driven climate change ‘consensus’ and his opposition to Rudd’s carbon legislation is, believe it or not, making world headlines. The WSJ has published an editorial in its US edition on the Senator:

Steve Fielding recently asked the Obama administration to reassure him on the science of man-made global warming. When the administration proved unhelpful, Mr. Fielding decided to vote against climate-change legislation.

If you haven’t heard of this politician, it’s because he’s a member of the Australian Senate…

Credit for Australia’s own era of renewed enlightenment goes to Dr. Ian Plimer, a well-known Australian geologist. Earlier this year he published “Heaven and Earth,” a damning critique of the “evidence” underpinning man-made global warming. The book is already in its fifth printing.

Real Clear Politics also ran a similar article outlining Fielding’s opposition and questioning:

Fielding has issued a challenge to the Obama White House to rebut the data. It will be a novel experience for them, as Fielding is an engineer and has an Australian’s disregard for self-important government officials. Here is how The Age described his challenge:

Senator Fielding emailed graphs that claim the globe had not warmed for a decade to Joseph Aldy, US President Barack Obama’s special assistant on energy and the environment, after a meeting on Thursday…. Senator Fielding said he found that Dr. Aldy and other Obama administration officials were not interested in discussing the legitimacy of climate science.

Telling an Australian you’re not interested in the legitimacy of your position is a red rag to a bull.

Note that Plimer’s book is already ranked 138 on Amazon sales, even though the US edition has not yet been released.