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Sunday, April 01, 2012

The National Party ACC fratricide: A study in the dangers of factions turning to feral right wing blogs

So this is what it sounds like when the National Party Loves fry? Boag and Collins taking out poor old Nick Smith with friendly fire is evidence of a factional war within National that is so reverberating and deep that finally the mainstream media pundits are even acknowledging it.

What Nick Smith is actually guilty of in his dealings with Pullar is hypocrisy. It is hypocrisy to help a friend when so many other NZers trying to gain compensation from an agency that had a history of turning down applications unjustly got nothing from Smith as a Minister.

The Labour front bench for a long time had a tactic of yelling 'Operation Bronwyn' whenever Nick hit a nerve in the House. For Labour's favorite Nick Smith cudgel to be whipped out of their hands and used by Collins to lash out at Boag is nothing short of political fratricide.

Collins jockeying for leadership post Key has become a liability to the Party for a number of reasons.

Part of the problem has been the vacuum created by Simon Power's leaving, part of it is because Murray McCully's eye is off the ball over MFAT, part of it is because Nikki Kaye and Simon Bridges talent continues to languish, part of it is because English is squaring off against our first tzar, Steven Joyce and part of it is because Key must have internally signaled that he's off soon.

The other part of the problem is feral right wing bloggers. With angry tempers comes text regretted messages fired off in the heat of blood letting that gives immediate fuel to the media cycle once dirty laundry gets aired on line in a blog. The wounds being caused to the Party by this on line blood letting are causing far more damage internally than any external assault launched by Labour.

The sudden ability to destabilize the Government by Ministers waging war with the sending of a text is a threat not calculated by the whips and strategists yet. The blogs have always served a point to lead the news media, they haven't been seen as weapons for the factions before.

The real shock is the sudden loss of discipline and control of the agenda by National handlers. That this ACC fiasco has been allowed to escalate with the speed it has is inexcusable and reflects a total lack of political management by the Government in stemming the blood letting.

To paraphrase Batman Dark Knight for National Party strategists - some bloggers just want to see the world burn.


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1 Comments:

At 1/4/12 9:46 pm, Blogger Frank said...

Indeed! ;-)

 

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