Andrew Bolt: Trump isn’t the only reason Peter Dutton’s campaign is quickly collapsing
The Coalition can no longer ignore its own failings. Where is its overall vision? Just expecting voters to punish Labor for its failings was never enough.
Andrew Bolt
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Donald Trump isn’t the only reason the Coalition’s campaign has so quickly collapsed, but, boy, the US president has helped kick it to pieces.
I know, the Coalition can’t ignore its own failings.
Where is its overall vision? Just expecting voters to punish Labor for its failings was never enough.
Why didn’t it immediately counter Labor’s miserable tax cut with a bigger one?
Where is its defence policy? Keeping Australians safe in an unsafe world seemed a gimme issue for a Coalition with a tough leader.
Why was the effort to humanise leader Peter Dutton, actually a good and sensitive man, left to just the past week, with his 20 year old son asked to join the campaign.
By then Dutton senior was almost pleading his case to journalists, not radiating confidence.
And then there was the Coalition’s haplessness in fighting Labor’s campaign of utter lies – how the Coalition wanted $600 billion nuclear reactors, secret spending cuts and the destruction of Medicare.
But looming over it all is Trump.
To say Dutton copied Trump policies is another Labor lie, of course, unless cutting the government’s massive spending to cut our record debt is something only a Trump monster would do.
But Labor’s attack on Dutton as a mini-Trump has stuck. A Resolve poll this week said 35 per cent of undecided voters were less likely to back Dutton because of Trump.
No wonder. Trump makes the world look a lot more uncertain and dangerous. His tariff war made the stock market yoyo and cost us money. His suck-uppery to Russian despot Vladimir Putin and his attacks on Europe makes our faith in our allies and shared values look naive.
When nerves are so jittery, someone as amiable and blokey as Albanese looks reassuringly non-threatening, especially if he’s spraying handouts.
But Dutton looks like unwelcome disruption in troubling times, no matter how often he says “me, too”.
Making the Trump factor worse is the worship some on the Right have of a man who trashes conservative values such as reason, civility and loyalty.
This cult of the strong man looks especially sick when Trump this week even blamed Ukraine for getting itself invaded.
Even most conservative voters now say they don’t like Trump, yet no one in the Coalition dares say a word against him.
But look at the polls. That’s the price of forgetting not just your policies but your principles.
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