As the life drains from the current Liberal coalition, its interesting to observe how they are scurrying around trying to generate a reason for folk to vote for them. This last week has been quite an eye opener with Howard caught short coming up with a reason why he should have another crack at being PM.
I guess it's hard to turn the good ship "Lost Cause" about when your whole strategy has been to attack Rudd. Having failed to impress the Voters with this "one shot" solution, they now find themselves trying to come up with forward looking policies when their natural tendency is to look back. Particularly unhelpful has been Alexander Downer who has failed to learn what Tony Abbott has worked out. Namely that putting the boot into Rudd is a plus for Rudd.
To add insult to injury, Howard seems to think he can tell the Voters what to think rather than actually listening to what the Voters are saying. Global warming is a classic example. While the Public were clamouring for the government to start planning for the future, they were running flat out with a denial campaign. Same with Hicks. Same with WorkChoices. Hey, its fun to play hard ball but at the end of the day the Government is supposed to listen to the Voters. When you decide that spin can beat listening, you risk a reaction and that’s exactly what we have here.
Can Howard survive? I think it comes down to if he can restore the trust. Current utterances would suggest he hasn't worked it out yet. Perhaps if he burned the inept designer of WorkChoices, Kevin Andrews, it would at least show some understanding of how the Public feel about the trashing of the Safety net. It would probably help if he showed some good ideas about dealing with Global Warming too but it looks like he still doesn't believe it. He hasn't even managed to help the business world by setting up a carbon trading scheme and that’s just a minor part of dealing with the problem.
What has Howard got left? Fear. Standby for ramping up the fear campaigns on Terrorism, Unions, Interest rates, Net porn, States Rights, US acceptance, border security, non-Christians. Howard's low opinion of the Aussie Voter may be about to come crashing down around his ears. I certainly hope so. When you forget who the Boss is, it's time to go.
