The irrational slide to Rudd

As baying for partition within the GOP persists, with Howard loyalists being subjected to repulsive howls from panic stricken cognac drinking conservatives, the only sure thing is that such distractions merely weaken the government.

While the government is weak, any attempt to focus on a Sino-sycophantic Rudd administration as a peril to our national security will prove ineffective and futile. And this is a separate issue to the GOP running advertisements warning of the dangers of a Rudd-Swan government in Canberra as nothing but a quisling of socialist administrations in every single state and territory.

Unfortunately, it seems that the public is determined to elect a bunch of amateurs whose aggregate experience in office, knowledge of economics and achievements to date are so scant they can be summarised on the back of a shop-a-docket. The public’s asinine judgment was illustrated on the ABC radio’s World Today program of September 11 when voters in the PM’s Sydney seat of Bennelong agreed that as Prime Minister, Howard has indeed been “brilliant”, yet they actively consider voting for Rudd.

Compare the economic prosperity under Howard to the banana republicanism of Labor’s Paul Keating. Think back to the 1970s, to Rex Conner’s Pakistani loans scandal. Rex proudly served under Labor icon, Gough Whitlam.

The gravitation towards Rudd demonstrates an irrationality steeped in ignorance that flies in the face of logic. And that’s surely the point.

The public has not been reminded of Labor’s abysmal economic track record. The public needs to be reminded of Kevin Rudd’s and Wayne Swan’s gross inexperience. And it’s time they were.

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Given the irrational slide to Rudd in the polls, it’s timely to ask if such national electoral suicide has ever befallen another people. And if so, what lessons can be drawn?

As luck would have it, similar electoral stupidity was on show some 62 years ago. The United Kingdom General Election of July 1945 was very significant indeed. Between 1940 and 1945 Winston Churchill was probably the most popular British prime minister of all time. Between 1996 and 2006 John Winston Howard was more popular than Vegemite in Australian kitchens.

In May 1945 Churchill’s approval rating in the opinion polls, which had never fallen below 78 per cent, was parked in the low 80s. With few exceptions, politicians and commentators confidently predicted that he would lead the Conservatives to victory at the July general election.

Until late 2006, most commentators declared that Howard would wipe the floor with any Socialist: Latham, Crean or Beazley. Whoever the Socialists would throw up would fall over under the weight of the Howard locomotive.

In the event, Churchill led the Conservatives to one of their greatest ever defeats. Many hold that Labour’s brilliance was in convincing the electorate that the very qualities that had made him a great leader in war made him unsuited to domestic politics in peacetime.