That's the only way of seeing the Nat's plan to brand themselves as cool to appeal to the youth vote. Are they really so desperate that they're lifting their strategies from FaceLift now? Still, it could be worse - they could be trying to market themselves as "sexy" by getting a special nude Gerry Brownlee sealed section into the pages of Cleo...
Here's a suggestion for National: rather then trying this sort of desperate media campaign to brand themselves, they could try actually changing their policies so that they are more likely to appeal to young and woman voters. You know, by removing the cruelty, viciousness, bigotry, and concern only with rich old white men that currently seems to define them. Possibly they could also treat their female MPs with a little more respect as well, rather than regarding them as fit only for the backbenches, the kitchen, and (by extension) the pages of Women's Weekly. But I guess that avoiding having to make real changes, to the possible detriment of the interests of those rich old white men, is precisely the point...
what i find scary is how much the "face lift" don brash reminds me of edward (edward and tubbs who run the local shop for local people) from "league of gentleman"
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Or how their welfare policies mirror those of the JobCentre...?
ReplyDeleteFirst pictures of the National image re-working are out...
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Parties changing their policies to maximise appeal to the widest possible audience seems anti-democratic to me. Surely parties should be sticking to their principles and trying to explain to voters why they think they're right, so voters have an actual choice instead of picking one of a bunch of indistinguishable parties who all have variations on the same core policies.
ReplyDeleteAnti-democratic? It's what democracy is all about: responsiveness to what people actually want. More generally, if you want to get elected, you need to build a majority behind you, and a crucial part of this is adopting policies that will attract that majority - either internally, or as mediated by the coalition process.
ReplyDeleteAnd if all parties adopt policies that will attract that majority, how do you decide who to vote for? Especially if you're a member of the minority...
ReplyDeleteCMT: Then you do what you always do and compromise and choose the least worst option, or say "fuck the lot of you" and ignore them all. But I think it is worth pointing out that, under MMP, a party doesn't have to target majority support and can do quite well simply by targetting a specific subset of the vote (and several of them do). The problem is really one for "broad church" parties. And for them, its clear botht hat there are multiple potential majorities available, and that despite the attempts of both parties to appeal to what they think of as the "center ground", there are still too very different visions there which will guide overall policy. Even if you limit your voting choice to the two major parties, you still have a choice between a party which will empower the poor, or punish them; between one that believes in progress and one that believes in stopping it; between one that represents urbanites and one that represents rural people. Those are real choices, even if the parties are much the same in other respects. Clerly, they're not enough for you, but they may be enough for others.
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