Yesterday I blogged that Rudd's backflip on the death penalty for terrorists was scary because he said was re-educating his staff to fall in line. I still think that's scary but it's not the main problem that this u-turn exposed, as the PM pointed out.
Johnny said that for Kevin to put the responsibility on his Foreign affairs spokesman and his staffers for Labour Party policy is the sort of buck-passing and blame-game tactics that he keeps trying to pin on the Liberals. It's just another example of hypocrisy and of weak leadership.
Rudd approves all ALP policy, he's the boss, he should carry the can for it. I fell for Rudd's line that the other people were responsible. Johnny didn't.
That's why he's the PM and I'm not.
It was classic Rudd 'nuance' to deflect attention from a policy that is insensitive to terror victims, by claiming that it was the timing of the announcement that was the insensitive. He's too smart by half. He even confused Kerry O'Brien last night, the silk who does the 7:30 reports. I too was bamboozeled by Rudd's gymnastic stonewalling. It was quite a feat for him to support his own policy and somehow not support announcing it, but he managed. Somehow I dont think Joe Public is going to get the subtlety.
As we see in The Age today. On the front page writ large is the impression that Lefty Joe Public got. The headline read something about another me-too-u-turn, illustrated by a big picture of Rudd looking sneaky and two quotes from Rudd: one 5 days ago against the death penalty in Asia and yesterday's repudiation of that quote. The Age is going a better job of showing up Rudd's hypocrisy than the PM! They must have figured this out because now this article is no where to be seen on homepage of The Age's website.
Rudd has miscalculated in taking the lefty vote for granted. He's pushing them towards the greens with his attempts to woo the meat-eaters. But he's not getting that right either. Rudd's most hard-line quote yesterday was that ALP policy was to "hunt terrorists down and put them in jail, where they should rot for the term of their natural lives and be carried out in a pine box". He was trying to sound butch and nearly pulled it off, but not quite.
He didn't go far enough. Why wait for nature to take its course? Why not top the bastards now? Same result. He wants them to die but does not want to pull the trigger. What a gutless wonder.
My policy would be exactly the same that of Maliki the Iraqi PM, that is we should "hunt terrorists down and kill them." kaput. end-of. If we meet them on the battlefield kill them then and there, or if the throw down their guns and we capture them we should charge them, put them on trial, convict them, and then kill them.
I support the death penalty for mass murderers like Bin Laden, Saddam and the Bali Bombers. My guess is so do most people in the world, not just Australia.
Both the policy of opposing the death penalty for terrorists and announcing it 3 days before the anniversary of the Bali bombings will be disaggreable, if not offensive, to most Australians. Both show that the ALP cares more about lefty ideals than they do about Australian lives lost. The 360 degree u-turn on policy executed Mr Rudd shows that he cares more about getting into power then telling you the truth about what he thinks and what he will do once he gets there.
