The latest Newspoll results have really shaken the nuts out of their tree.
Matt Price (spoiler alert: he is the only non-nut in this piece) covers the different yet equally pathetic responses from Dolly, the Mad Monk and the Smirk. They really don’t seem to have a clue how to respond to this, and yet their personalities force them into certain behaviours – Dolly has to insinuate that the enemy is mean and nasty, the Monk has to deny that the polls can mean what they clearly show, and the Smirk has to rabbit on for a while to show his wisdom without offering anything constructive.
Paul Kelly simultaneously tells us that John Howard is a wonderful PM and that John Howard must quit. Kelly seems to be acting as the self-appointed protector of the Howard legacy by noting all the wonderful things that have happened under his leadership and then suggesting he gets out of town before it turns ugly. My favourite part – since 2004, “Iraq has gone bad.” Yep, because ‘03 and ‘04 were a cakewalk – which explains why we were still there at the last federal election, 18 months after “Mission Accomplished.” And then, Kelly leads us neatly into the next piece of wankery with his statement that:
There may be a defect with polling methodology this year. If not, then Newspoll’s result on the eve of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum summit is a shocker, with Labor’s primary vote lead 51 per cent to 37 per cent.
Yes, four different polling companies, some of them using multiple different polling methodologies, showing consistently bad results for more than six months, and “there may be a defect.” A well-constructed argument.
But, as always, Dennis can outwank anyone. There’s already a good commentary by Mark Bahnisch about this bad piece of journalism. The interesting thing is that, in the same way that Shanahan et al. have consistently seized on whichever number gives the coalition a glimmer of hope from every poll, the fact that the latest individual poll is dreadful and does not give the slightest bit of hope has sent them into a frenzy of catastrophising. They must explain the polls, but they can’t acknowledge that the polls actually reflect reality – which makes these commentators no better than Downer, Abbott or Costello.
