Voters will not blame Prime Minister John Howard if interest rates go up as expected this week, a new Galaxy poll has found.What a crock. The rates haven't even gone up yet, and in truth 100 percent of voters still have to make their "final decision". But even Galaxy cannot hide the harsh truth: voters have deserted Howard and they are NOT coming back.
The poll also found that while Labor has retained its election-winning lead, 22 per cent of voters have yet to make their final decision.
Loathe as I am to call this election three weeks out, the coming interest rate rise surely sounds the death knell for John W. Howard. It may not be the last nail in his political coffin, but it's surely the one that shuts the lid down so tightly that even he cannot escape again. Surely?
The lesson from abroad today is that repressive governments and military dictatorships are not, and never will be, friends of true democracy. The lesson at home is that the Coalition never could be trusted to keep interest rates low. Can someone please tally a list of all the public assets Howard has sold off in the past 11 years? Then add up all the profits made from selling our country's natural resources overseas? Then look at what we ordinary Australians have gotten in return?
So what do you do now, if you are in John Howard's fear-soaked socks? You keep spinning it like it's real. You stick with your Karl Rove playbook and pretend that your greatest weakness is actually a strength, and you use it to hammer your opponents, even if that makes no sense whatsoever. Howard is warning to Costello's talk of a global economic tsunami, ignoring the fact that it was his great mate in Washington, George W. Bush, who criminally misguided policies created that same tsunami.
And Howard cheered him all the way.
