Another dead-end comment

What with all the froth and foam coming from the federal Liberal Party at the moment, it is hard to know where one might begin in assembling a gallery of shame.

At the moment, Sophie Mirabella has shown some signs of changing the dynamics of the debate over emissions trading, although she managed to play the person rather than the matter at hand today.  Rather than likening the Prime Minister to Hitler (a pretty standard tactic for poor Sophie), she's brought the same fallacy up-to-date by making the comparison one between Gillard and Gaddafi.  It has the ring of alliterative authenticity, if nothing else.

As things stand, the Liberals are unelectable solely on the strength of the ick-factor raised by the pretty open bigotry on display by some members of the shadow cabinet.  They didn't win anything near a majority of votes in the election last year; it is testimony to their campaign that they won nearly half the seats on a pretty mediocre primary vote.  The Howard era casts a very long shadow over the party, and it is vital to exorcise it if they are ever to be viewed as a credible alternative to the present government.  So much of the racial discourse going on in the party concerns groups of people who are well-represented in the citizenry, and sets up the ground for an ongoing slander based on the immigrant origins of certain groups.  I would have thought that a couple of centuries of immigration being the normal way of things would have put pay to that, but clearly not.

And Mr Rabbit continues to smooth things over, making excuses for these latest rhetorical outrages.  He winks and nods, tuts gently while reinforcing the message.  Then another of his members comes out with something slightly more over the top and the whole routine starts again.  He is a man who acknowledges no boundaries in public behaviour -- one must ask where his whip is.  By comparison, the standard of public engagement on the Labor side has improved considerably since the beginning of the year.  If the Liberals would make similar efforts we might actually have something passing for public debate.  Instead, we get dead-end excuses while the Marvellous Sophie shows us how low things might yet go.