National appears to be attempting a triangulation like policy, trying to woo swing voters on the centre left by embracing woke leftist policies like LGBT. The trick, is to woo swing voters, without undermining support from your own base. The downfall can be that you alienate your own base, and do not attract a significant number of swing voters.
National IMO is not very good at managing a multi-party coalition. Labour by comparison is joined at the hip with the Greens, and with the Maori electoral seats. Labour successfully occupy the centre left, and let their coalition partners occupy more fringe positions. The fringe partners can push potentially unpopular policies, without affecting support for the centre party. If those policy initiatives are successful, Labour can take the credit. If they are wildly unpopular, Labour can isolate itself from the criticism.
National would do well to follow a similar strategy, and work towards a long term relationship with their coalition partners. Instead, National seems to be wanting to cover the whole centre political space. That is not likely to work. National is likely to alienate swing voters, and parts of the base.
National were elected, at least in part, to take us away from the woke leftist madness. We can see a similar trend in other western countries, most notably in the Donald’s USA. Most average citizens do not want all that silly stuff. They just want to get on with their lives.
Instead of fulfilling that mandate, National seem to be fiddling around, frightened to do anything definite because they might lose votes. The consequence of that is that they are likely to lose support from all sides. Better to annoy one group of voters, rather than annoy all of them.
New Zealand seems to be lacking a genuinely conservative party. National, ACT and New Zealand First are all over the place, conservative in parts like the curate’s egg, but inconsistent and trying to be too many things to too many people.
Perhaps National should encourage a genuinely conservative coalition partner to form? Or, maybe we should make the Donald New Zealand President when he has finished up in the US (note I am not a Donald fan).
As part of their new found wokeness, National have come out against the Destiny Church members who protested a drag queen grooming young children at Te Atatu library. I am not a fan of Destiny Church, but I do respect their standing up for their moral beliefs. Most of our enlightened society seems to be too cowardly to express any controversial opinion or to have any moral beliefs. So good on you Destiny Church. At least you believe in something, and you are prepared to defend it.
Below is an excerpt from the local Western Bay National Party newsletter.
National Pride!
My National Party colleagues, James Meager, Simon Watts,Cameron Brewer,Erica Stanford, Dan Bidois and Chris Bishop all joined in at the annual Pride Parade in Auckland on Saturday night, representing the National Party and celebrating our individual differences and strengths that make us collectively stronger as a nation.
I understand from media reporting that Police are actively investigating the actions of the group associated with Destiny Church, which protested at the community and children’s event – part of Auckland’s Pride Festival – at the Te Atatū library on Saturday.
It’s not the Kiwi way to disrupt and intimidate like that.
New Zealand is a country that values diversity and is well known for it, making New Zealand a much better place for the diversity in it.
We respect people’s right to free speech and peaceful protest, but they went too far.
Leave a Reply