Some people never learn, no matter how hard the lesson gets beaten into them. South Australia’s Liberals are possibly the most left-wing, wet, “progressive” wing of the party in Australia (and that’s saying something). They’ve won just three elections in the last 40 years.
You’d think the lesson might have started to sink in by now. Apparently not.
Former broadcaster Alan Jones and anti-trans campaigner Katherine Deves have been called upon by SA Liberal conservatives to help the party chart a new course after years of moderate domination.
The move, led by rebel right wing Senator Alex Antic, has enraged party moderates who fear the conservatives will use their surging membership numbers to shift the party so far right that it will be unelectable.
The party has been so far left that it’s been well-nigh unelectable for the last few decades. Conservatives are flocking to join. Try putting two and two together, you dripping wet nitwits.
Note, too, the tendentious framing of Deves as “anti-trans”, when a more accurate description would be “pro-women’s rights”.
Senator Antic has been linked to the recruitment of about 1000 new members over the past 12 months, many frustrated Christians angered by key figures in the former Marshall Liberal government supporting late-term abortion and euthanasia laws.
In a tactical blunder, SA Liberal headquarters initially suspended the membership of hundreds of these members last year, angering and emboldening them.
The new members now account for almost 20 per cent of the SA division, with the conservatives a real chance of taking control of the party at its annual general meeting this weekend.
Note, too, the even more ludicrous framing of soggy blue-greens as “moderates”.
The Australian has been told one of the first acts of the party’s now conservative-dominated Liberal Women’s Council was to invite lawyer and failed Warringah candidate Katherine Deves to Adelaide last month to address female party members.
Deves committed the unpardonable sin during the campaign of upsetting the cocks-in-frocks lobby. She might have lost in Warringah, but since when is one of the richest electorates in Australia the moral arbiter of the nation? Are we really supposed to believe that doctor’s wives in harbourside mansions are the “real Australia”?
Ms Deves received a rave reception from conservatives in Adelaide, with new women’s council president Leah Blythe hailing her contribution to the Adelaide meeting.
“Katherine is a brave and principled advocate for women,” Ms Blyth wrote to women’s council members after the address.
“It was inspiring to hear the story of her campaign. She told of being thrust into the centre of a national debate over women’s sex-based rights, while being on the receiving end of significant adverse media attention.”
The issue here is not boogey-man conservatives taking over what has become little more than a rich leftist losers club, but that the Liberal party has let itself be captured by bedwetters who take all their political cues from Twitter.
“It is of little surprise that the left faction of the party in SA cannot understand the interest in hearing what great people like endorsed Liberal Party candidate Katherine Deves and lifelong Liberal supporter Alan Jones have to say,” Senator Antic told The Australian.
“Both speak without fear or favour about real Liberal values and don’t pull punches. I guess we can’t expect the architects of two catastrophic electoral failures in this state to understand.”
The Australian
Face it: what have the SA Liberals got to lose by actually becoming a centre-right party for the first time in half a century? An election? They’re already dab hands at losing those, thanks to the “moderates”.