I’m less sure than most that overt religiosity in the libs will be a major electoral negative for them.
Most people are very consistent with who they vote for, from year to year. That’s why even in the most ‘landslide’ of elections, the two-party-preferred vote split tends to be something like 56-44 at the most extreme. If the nature and demographic of a party’s candidates change slowly enough, then I think the voters will mostly not get too stressed about this sort of stuff. Or the counterpoint is that if you get them to hate the opposition enough, they’ll hold their nose and vote for you regardless.
Everyone talks about ‘swinging voters’ as being vital to the outcome of every election, which they are, but they’re a pretty small proportion of the population.
And it’s amazing how the political orthodoxy within a party or within a political system (the ol’ Overton window) can shift over time. I’m old enough to remember when Howard lost govt decisively (and lost his own seat) largely because his government wasn’t doing enough on climate change, but now his party is in power and its climate policy is being driven by the tinfoil hat ‘there’s no evidence that climate change is happening, and if there is, it’s a hoax by Tim Flannery and Al Gore, and if it isn’t, climate change is natural, and if it isn’t, there’s nothihng we can do about it, and if there is, doing anythign about it is too expensive’ brigade. Unthinkable even in Howard’s day. And I’m sure that BF could tell you all about how some orthodoxies within the pre-Hawke/Keating ALP (tariffs, nationalisation, etc etc) would be unthinkable in today’s parliamentary Labor party.
One of the things that changes LEAST in politics is the adherence of most people to their preferred political party.
Edit: furthermore, in a landslide election loss, it’s the members of your party in the most marginal seats who get kicked out. Marginal seats tend to the more moderate or mixed ones, so generally don’t have extreme candidates who might put people off. The safe seats are the ones where the extremists live because they have a more homogeneous voter base, and even in a landslide, the MPs tend to hang on. So what that means is that after a landslide loss, the more extreme people tend to bhe the only ones left, so they fill all the leadership and shadow ministry slots in the new opposition. Which tends to mean the political debate for the next term is shaped by the extreme side of the party.
If there’s one thing people aren’t good at doing it’s admitting they’re wrong about something. Something people are also good at is tribalism. Combine those two things with politics and you have a lot of people doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Just becuase most elections end up relatively close doesn’t mean there isn’t big changes in voting. Every two elections or 8 years is a lot of people dieing and a lot of kids voting for the first time.
It’s a cleche that people start of progressive and then turn conservative buts it’s also true. The religious nutters are going to hurt this. A moderatly progressive 30 something that now owns a house and has kids was prime fodder for Howard to turn during his leadership. They are going to be much harder to sway for far right nonsense.
The coalition doesn’t do well on the youth which means they must convert them later. It happens regularly enough that voting patterns don’t show it. But the current events could change it. Does a 30 yo who has supported marriage equality really vote for people who want gay conversion therapy?
Probably. If they get charm offended with half truths about tax reform and pure bullshit about the economy until they forget about the 15 other things they don’t agree with that barely gets a mention at the right time.
Well anyone who doesnt vote like me is a dead-set moron, but are there really any MP’s who are incompetent, self-serving tossers.
I know some who are incompetent. but they rarely do more than one term.
I know some who are definitely self-serving, and know how to lick enough bums to survive more than one term.
I know one or maybe two that are tossers., meaning that are obnoxious in most ways and they last siometimes forever, or it seems that way.
Hardly incompetent; he rose to be Deputy PM, Leader of Nats and a long term MP.
Self-serving; arguable. Highly opinionated, very vocal but not sure it was all about him.
Tossa; no farking doubt that he is a gigantic tossa. About the most obnoxious bloke you ever would meet. Though the girls in his office were always an eyeful.
The shifting of the multi million dollar whatever it was facility into his own electorate to secure his position at a totally unnecessary huge cost to the Tax payers slipped by you did it?
Again not sure that Barnaby is a sociopath; very capable bullshitter. Maybe I have a lower standard of what is competent that you. No doubt he is quite weird, I had the “pleasure” of meeting with him in his Canberra office and it was very weird.
Yeah strong agree on this one. You don’t get to be a leader or C-level exec or commander or whatever of anything without always looking out for numero uno and being “ruthless” (ie a c-bomb)
