Time to Dry Out the ‘Moderates’

Good Oil readers may be wondering why Victorians voted for ‘Dictator Dan’ Andrews, not once, but three times: even after the world’s longest lockdowns and the state plunged into insolvency for the second time in a quarter-century. For that matter, you might be astonished that a government so obviously inept as Anthony Albanese’s ever got elected in the first place.

The answer is simple: Liberal ‘moderates’.

Many are as wet as the proverbial week-old lettuce leaf. Moderate in this sense means sentimental and emotional. Or to put it another way, completely free of sharp and rational analysis.

The other, related, trait of many political moderates is they haven’t had any recent big political wins.

“Many”? Try all. From the “mincing poodle” Christopher Pyne, to Malcolm Turnbull, to John Pesutto in Victoria, ‘Liberal Moderates’ are little more than Greens in more expensive suits. Which is why they keep losing: why on Earth would traditional, centre-right Liberal voters vote for limp-wristed, wannabe-Greens? Why would Greens voters support a pale, squishy imitation, when they can get the real thing?

The ‘moderates’ stand for nothing and, as a consquence, appeal to no one.

Well, it’s not quite true that they stand for nothing: they stand for everything the left tells them to.

Before Malcolm Turnbull writes a letter to the editor about same-sex marriage, remember that reform was supported by people across the political spectrum – and, in any case, it was championed by Warren Entsch long before Turnbull did the victory lap in parliament.

The voice is the most recent example of the woeful political skills of modern moderates. Those moderates who supported the voice had a decade or so to win us over, yet the more they spoke about being on the right side of history, the less likely they were to succeed in inserting a race-based body into the Constitution.

Try to think of a big issue, any issue, where Liberal ‘moderates’ are distinguishable from the left: climate change, rainbow groomers, immigration, the Voice… whatever the left wants, the ‘moderates’ are there, splashing in their wake, weakly bleating, “Us, too!”

Just like the left, ‘moderates’ are insufferably self righteous. They have their heads so far up their own arses with their delusions of unimpeachable moral goodness, it’s a wonder they don’t suffocate. If only.

While most conservatives will contest an idea they disagree with by saying the idea is a bad one, and explain why, many moderates conflate an idea with the presumed morality of the person espousing the idea.

If a political moderate advocates an idea, they will claim to be our moral saviour. If a political moderate disagrees with an idea, they will routinely deride the proponent of the idea as a moral reprobate. Think the voice, again.

Or John Pesutto.

Instead of defending one of his own MPs, a centre-right conservative woman unfairly attacked by the unhinged left, Pesutto stuck the boot in. ‘Moderates’ being pathetic toadies by nature, Pesutto clearly hoped that by joining in the pile on, the bullies might let him hang around their gang for once.

As Federal Court judge David O’Callaghan found last week, it was Pesutto – not neo-Nazis – who damaged Deeming’s reputation and career by defaming her as a Nazi sympathiser after the women’s march was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis.

Pesutto didn’t defame Deeming once; that might be vaguely moderate. He did it five times – in a media release, in radio and television interviews, at a press conference and in an expulsion motion and dossier – imputing the worst kind of wickedness. As the Federal Court judge found, Pesutto imputed “that Mrs Deeming associates with Nazis and is thus unfit to be a member of the parliamentary Liberal Party” […]

In other words, the dictionary definition of moderate doesn’t apply to Pesutto.

Yet, for all their claims to be, as the self-righteous left are wont, ‘on the right side of history’, ‘moderates’ are distinguished only by their losing streak.

Nobody would in their wildest dreams call Tony Abbott a ‘moderate’: his views are far too sensibly centre-right for that. Yet Abbott won an historic victory: having only failed to relegate Rudd/Gillard Labor to a one-term government (thanks to craven betrayal by, you guessed it, two ‘moderates’). At the next election, Abbott became one of the few Liberals to win government from opposition.

Then he was brought down by ‘moderate’ Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop. Scott Morrison pretended to be a conservative, but let the ‘moderates’ set the running. As a consequence, Anthony Albanese is prime minister.

Peter Dutton is not a ‘moderate’, either. The question is whether he can dry out the coalition’s ranks enough to consign the ‘moderates’ to the oblivion they deserve.