Donald Trump has been a disaster for conservatives this week | David Penberthy
The US president has triggered a seismic shift for the right – and not just in Australia, writes David Penberthy.
For this column I’m going to do something I’ve never done in the 30-odd years I’ve been writing for newspapers. I’m going to withdraw an opinion I offered and replace it with a new one.
I’m doing it in record time, too, because the original opinion being replaced today was offered just six Sundays ago on February 2, on this very page.
While I’ve been wrong before I’ve never been this wrong so quickly. It’s a new personal best, attributable to the extraordinary actions of one man – Donald Trump – and the impact his conduct will have on the looming federal election.
Back on February 2, I wrote that the anti-woke temper of the times suited Peter Dutton perfectly as he readied himself for the federal poll.
The backdrop to the piece was Australia Day and the strong and growing majority acceptance of January 26 as a day of celebration, after several years of unsuccessful lecturing from the Left and corporate Australia on Indigenous issues.
The column concluded with the words of a senior Labor MP who said he believed Peter Dutton, with his one flag/one nation stance, would “ride an anti-woke wave” all the way to the Lodge”.
Six weeks on I now believe what we have seen from Donald Trump in this past chaotic fortnight could make it harder for Dutton to win the election.
Since his inauguration in January Donald Trump has been shredding every page of the political rule book. One key rule now in the rubbish bin is the old maxim that a week is a long time in politics.
A week is now an eternity in politics. With Trump back at the helm, especially in his unshackled Trump 2.0 mode, more stuff happens in one day than normally happens in world politics in a month. It is frenetic. It is crazy. With the time difference between Australia and the US, we now wake up every morning to a new set of headlines which leave you shaking your head in disbelief.
The two most momentous developments of the past fortnight involve Ukraine and tariffs.
Many people who had a predisposition towards Trump and were even cheering on many of his policies were troubled by that appalling belittling of Zelensky in the White House. It confirmed the fears many of us had about what Trump’s return would mean for Ukraine – namely the Trump administration’s idea of “peace” would involve handing Vladimir Putin a Texta so he could draw his preferred map of Ukraine, with Putin also deciding how big its army is now allowed to be and whether it can join NATO.
There was a perverse moral equivalence to Trump’s approach, as if there’s good and bad on both sides, where the truth is a peaceful democracy in Ukraine was illegally attacked by an expansionist state which has to be resisted.
One of the best columns I have read on all this came not from a left-wing writer but Australia’s strongest conservative voice, Andrew Bolt, who surprised many of his followers by denouncing Trump’s conduct over Ukraine with such force and clarity.
And then there’s the tariff question, which quite simply in Australia’s case is a wholly undeserved slap in the face for a country that has shown nothing but loyalty to the US.
Working in talkback radio, where our show receives hundreds of texts a day, we have seen a marked shift in the feedback from listeners on Trump this fortnight.
Between belittling Ukraine, cuddling up to the Kremlin and insulting and harming a friend in Australia, the number of pro-Trump messages has plummeted.
Many could be filed under the derisive category of “reply guys”, those all-caps keyboard warriors who send messages like this if we dare criticise Trump: “TYPICAL MSM LEFTARDS ZELENSKY COVERED UP HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP AND WONT HOLD ELECTIONS UNLIKE PUTIN”
Meanwhile, the thoughtful and traditional conservatives in the Reagan and Bush mould – people who support free trade and a rules-based global order – have been looking at the events of the past fortnight in despair.
And a lot of normal Aussies who don’t follow politics that closely have been looking at Trump and saying, “well I always thought he was crazy but not that bloody crazy.
So what does it mean for Dutton?
Peter Dutton has been at pains to say he’s not “doing a Trump” to win the election.
But he holds that standing in the minds of many voters, a conservative hardliner on race and immigration, someone who has spoken out against wokeness and political correctness.
The risk is that for small-l liberal voters and other voters who are reassessing their views on Trump, anyone who looks like Australia’s own Donald Trump appears vastly less appealing on Sunday, March 16, 2025, than they did on Sunday, February 2.
Weirdly enough Trump is doing an effective job reviving moribund leftwing parties in other parts of the world.
The Canadian Liberals were on the mat amid Justin Trudeau’s resignation; now, the conservatives risk losing in Canada due to their perceived acquiescence or silence to Trump’s irrational hostility towards his northern neighbour.
The other thing which undermined Dutton this week was the ill-timed intervention of his former leader, ex-PM Malcolm Turnbull, as the US tariff position was being finalised.
Turnbull might have been right in what he said but his timing could not have been worse. And as inappropriate as Kevin Rudd is to be our Ambassador to Washington, Turnbull’s big mouth blunted Dutton’s attack on Rudd and Albanese’s apparent ineptitude.
And, frankly, as irritating as Kevin Rudd is, I don’t think Kofi Annan, Henry Kissinger and Boutros Boutros-Ghali combined could have negotiated their way to a tariff truce with this maniac who’s back inhabiting the White House.
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