Only in this bizarrely [sic] – and bizarrely uninteresting – campaign can Labor’s distribution of Tony Abbott’s comments on a variety of subjects be described by serious journalists as a “smear campaign” -- a term they so far haven’t used about the remorseless focus on Gillard’s marital and parental status.
The only bit of that I disagree with is the part about the campaign being boring, which as Mark suggested yesterday at Larvatus Prodeo is in itself a bizarre thing to say, what with roller-coaster polls every two minutes and superannuated pollies coming out of the woodwork to throw in their two cents' worth.
Still. While it is indeed ludicrous to call it a smear campaign, and I can imagine that seeking and finding words of Tony Abbott's to use against him must be a walk in the park, in the sense of being both easy and fun, I think they should stop it. It's a tiny bit grubby, but more to the point it makes Labor look desperate. I mean, they are desperate, but as almost every woman knows, advertising that fact only increases it threefold.
It's certainly grubby but not a smear campaign. We are three weeks off a denouement?
ReplyDeleteIf Gillard survives this, she'll survive anything.
Abbott has much less to lose, having performed the feat of getting the coalition on its feet, for the election.
And is Labor trying to poach votes back off the greens at the mo?
Not by the latest raft of policy releases.
It is weird. The notion that Tony Abbott's previous comments on the public record constitute a 'smear' has all sorts of implications!
ReplyDeleteWell, exactly.
ReplyDeleteMind you, I was once subjected to this sort of campaign, where someone takes facts about you and things you've said totally out of context and mashes them up to make you look as bad as possible, and it's a horrible experience and adds up to a totally distorted and misleading picture. But I would say that, wouldn't I ...