Doy!
Ever heard of a bloke called Beazley?
Well she's also nearing 70 these days. It's not so interesting, Billy Hughes was in his day Australia's longest ever serving Prime Minister, and there for the founding of both the Labor and Liberal Parties. But by the time Menzies became PM in 1949, he was no longer on the front bench. Fact is, he stuck around far longer than he had any good reason to (90 when his time in parliament ended, he's no doubt a more extreme version than Bishop). Too long is too long, it's nothing to do with firebrands crashing and burning.
Oh Billy Hughes what a perfectly relevant and comparable example. I think you'd be better to have used Lord Harris though, he's an even bigger stretch and you like making stretches. Fisher to Gillard etc etc. In 1994 Bishop was the most popular person in parliament. 7 years later she was dropped from the ministry and lost her speakership bid. She is a prime example of what happens to a politician who lets the electorate know she actually has a vision for the country.
So what's the cut-off date for history to be relevant? You seem to only accept a limited period of time that better suits your arguments, disregarding anything before it. How far back can I go?
Is Howard another one? Or am I going too far back there too?
On the contrary I choose an arguement that applies to a reasonable cut off date. As a general rule I use post Holt. Mainly because pre Gough the labor party was very amateur politically. No doubt their parliamentarians still worked hard but when it came to campaigns Calwell and his predecessors didn't really understand the role of fundraising, playing the media etc.
That's a fairly bold claim. The mere fact such ideas weren't carried policies throughout a campaign does not mean they were not ideological platforms. Howard eventually learned that in order to succeed politically, he needed to ensure there was a perceived distance between ideology and policy. He successfully managed to achieve this until the ill-fated 'Workchoices'.
He may have believed in those things quite strongly you are right, in the same way that Stephen Smith may think we should rip up the GST and hike up payroll tax.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
The word certainly is, it allowes people who dissagree to just brush off sensible, reasonable claims. Another phrase like that is "political correctness gone mad" excuses all manners of intollerance.
YOU FUCKING IDIOT
I'm aware a small majority of the press were swept up on the Latham bandwagon. Writing nonsense about his larikin personality going to help him connect with voters, Taking Howard on over values, etc etc. However please note I had never cited Ramsay on anything really, nor any of Latham's other funster mates in the press. Well atleast not seriously. And beware of apocryphal stories about Latham ever striding to the lead in polling, he had enormous approval ratings and enviable prefered pm ratings but voting intentions and two party prefered votes were never too favourable to Latham. Any lead he had in those were slim, and rare.
With respect if I was staring homosexually than it wouldn't have been at anyone. Calwell thought that using television as a form of campaigning was a bad idea, did you know that? Do you think that little old gnome and his supporters were going to get the party anywhere in post war twentieth century by hopping up and down on their soapboxes? Do you think I just pointed to some random date and said "that'll do"? Do you think that the views of an electorate during a world war, when intollerance was the norm, when Keynes was alive to defend his himself, when TV was a luxury not neccessity, do you think it might be reasonably to say "there probably aren't many political lessons that can be applied today, society was too different then?"
I do, don't think I'd ever seen it written before, was a total stab in the dark. Astonishingly the only thing I dissagree with about that was the change for changes sake is a bad move. Perhaps if you slotted in radical before the first change I'd agree.
I'd hoped our being catholic might have allowed for some bridge building like horse racing with you and I. Alas Iron will not consider me to be a true catholic so long as I insist on thinking for myself. You see being a catholic isn't really about belief in the lord or anything, they're optional extra's, it's more about being in the right place at the right time and voting for the right legislative councillors.