Don who?

20 comments on “Don who? ”

• Comments are now closed

1. lprent 1

   29 November 2010 at 1:52 pm

   He does seem a bit of a relic from the past. Like Douglas, he seems to have a fossilized refrain that shows no sign of any new thought processes based on the events of the past few years. The refrain that shows no awareness of the rapidly changing global economic landscape.

   Irrelevant politically. It’d take similar fossils to be interested in what they have to say.

   I’ll watch with interest to see who their defenders are…
2. ianmac 2

   29 November 2010 at 2:07 pm

   Mind you they did pay him a few hundred thousands to head up a task force which we are lead to believe was meaningless.
3. Jim Nald 3

   29 November 2010 at 2:16 pm

   don brash: broken record
4. Jenny 4

   29 November 2010 at 2:29 pm

   I don’t think anyone cares, or indeed anyone should care, about anything that this fading clown says…

   R0B

   I care, because as I understand it, this affable cretin, though no longer a danger to society, is still getting tens of thousands of dollars of tax payers money to spout his repetitive and predictable mad ideology.

   I think that the kindest thing to do, if Don Brash is unable to support himself in any other way, than off the taxpayer – couldn’t we at least put him on the standard Sickness Benefit as he becomes increasingly isolated and detached from reality.

   Though like all other lunatics this probably wouldn’t shut him up, it would certainly represent a significant cost saving, for anyone out there who actually values his utterances.

   capcha “held”
   • RobertM 4.1

     29 November 2010 at 4:19 pm

     He claims to be a libertarian, dedicated to freedom and choice. In reality the 2005 brash coup campaign was at about the level of Peters and Laws. Rabid law and order, demands to build mental asylums all over the country and pure undultered racism and fair mongering. Basset was sprouting his nonsense about the merits of nuclear power and nuclear powered submarines.The whole Brash- Richard Long campaign and policy was rabid and intolerable. However unlikely I have always assumed the Americans simply did the decent thing and passed the emails onto Hager. Anybody who knows anything would know that the US intelligence services monitor closely any serious comment about defence and strategic matters even in this country and the sort of derision and duplicityexpressed by Brashes advisors and the Actors about F-l6s and other defence matters would not have impressed the Americans. They were allies of Helen becasue they knew she would provide more blood and money for their defence efforts than a ‘christian’ like Brash. I seriously maintain that seriious people knew that Brash and his cohorts could not be allowed to take charge in a decent nation like NZ.
     As a result even though I had long ceased to support Helen Clark, I covered my house in the Avon loop with Green advertising, ticked both green boxes and had beautiful pictures of Jeanttee Fitzimon, up. As usual Tim Barnett univited decided to hold his shoebox meeting outside my house. I argued with Barnett that in 2005 in my opinion, hide was going to get in in Epsom and really on the last day of campaign, she should go to Epsom to pleed the small element of decency in them, to get rid of Act. Barnett treated this with contempt and stormed into his caravan, to pretend to make a call to Clark. Tim claimed it was under control, that Rodney would never witn and Epsom was the last place Clark would be on penultimate election day in 2005.
5. Bryce Edwards 5

   29 November 2010 at 2:45 pm

   R0b’s argument about ignoring Don Brash is fair enough. Brash is after all, ‘yesterday’s man’.

   Nonetheless, the political right and the National Party are actually running this country, and it’s therefore important to understand them. Brash has no real standing amongst the leadership of the current National Party, but he does represent a significant faction and mood within the wider party (and the Establishment in general). So to ignore Brash is to say that you’re not interested in understanding the question of “Who runs New Zealand”. In my view, the left is too disinterested in this question. But if you want to change society, you need to first understand what you’re dealing with. Know thy enemy…

   But thanks for the link to my blog post.
   • r0b 5.1

     29 November 2010 at 2:51 pm

     he does represent a significant faction and mood within the wider party

     Convince me. I’m not being facetious, this is the essence of it. Is Brash an isolated old clown (like Douglas), or does he really represent a significant chunk of opinion within the Nats?

     But thanks for the link to my blog post.

     Not at all, lots of great stuff on your blog. And I miss the days when you used to comment here more often.
     • Draco T Bastard 5.1.1

       29 November 2010 at 5:52 pm

       IMO, I think you’d find that Brash represents around 15% to 20% of the National Party.
     • Bryce Edwards 5.1.2

       30 November 2010 at 11:57 am

       R0b – I’ve been trying to formulate a lengthy reply to you to convince you, but actually the more I try the more I come to agree with you that Brash is not so relevant. While Brash does represent a significant faction and mood with National Party members, activists and supporters, as Draco T Bastard says, it’s probably only something like 20%. And more than this, Brash has absolutely no standing amongst the party leadership, and even his more radical neoliberalism isn’t even that popular amongst business leaders. The reality is that the centrist, relatively socially liberal, economically pragmatic status quo ideology of John Key is actually the ruling ideology of 2010, and this is quite alien to Brash.

       I stand by the argument that it’s still important to understand the different factions and ideologies of political parties and parts of the Establishment, even if they’re on the wane. But I agree, Brash is hardly of any vital importance.
       • r0b 5.1.2.1

         30 November 2010 at 12:13 pm

         Cheers Bryce, thanks for getting back to this. Fully agree on the latter points though, and I wonder who the front person will turn out to be when the anti-Key faction eventually finds its voice…
         • Bryce Edwards 5.1.2.1.1

           30 November 2010 at 12:23 pm

           Well, we can but only guess who will take the leadership of any inevitably anti-Key faction. And more importantly, what – if any – ideological nature will it represent?

           Stephen Joyce would be my best guess, purely on the basis that I rate him as a potential prime minister. But the problem for this prediction is that he’s actually incredibly close to Key and is, if anything, even more pragmatic than Key. But things can change. Similarly, Simon Power is also very competent and savvy but again fairly indistinguishable from Key. National doesn’t really do a lot of ideological diversity these days.
           • r0b 5.1.2.1.1.1

             30 November 2010 at 12:53 pm

             Interesting. An off line chat to another analyst that I respect turned up the same two names!
     • the pink postman 5.1.3

       30 November 2010 at 3:58 pm

       Well I think it would be foolish to ignore that Right-Wing intellectual.He is a dangerous man and Im sure has a big , very big ,following in grassroots National.One only has listen to a group of Tories talking to realise that the Brash ideas are quite common. They are just waiting for the right time to strike. Im picking that if they win the next election Brash and his ideas will be to the fore . The Maori Party will be mince meat.So
       goodbye Maori seats. Or as Brash says “Gone by Lunch Time”
6. Jeremy Harris 6

   29 November 2010 at 6:10 pm

   From what I understand the majority of his speech was about the economy, though you wouldn’t know it from the press coverage…
   • Bryce Edwards 6.1

     30 November 2010 at 12:01 pm

     Jeremy – that’s a good point. Some of the media are just looking for a juicy story about race and have lazily tried to report it like that. But it’s not all like that – I’ve actually been surprised that most of the media have indeed actually concentrated on Brash’s economic criticisms of the National Government. And, to push my own barrow a bit more, my lengthy blog post analysis only gave a very small amount of attention to the race stuff in Brash’s speech. See: http://liberation.typepad.com/liberation/2010/11/don-brashs-return-to-orewa-opening-up-divisions-in-national.html
   • Jeremy Harris 6.2

     30 November 2010 at 12:34 pm

     Without having read your post, my take is that it is a red flag to those members in the party more concerned with moving forward on free market economics than politics or conservatism and making sure progress towards reform makes it onto the 2011 election agenda through those member’s increased pressure…
7. randal 7

   30 November 2010 at 1:34 pm

   never trust a man who counts their baloney slices or who invests in hovercraft startups.
8. millsy 8

   30 November 2010 at 7:44 pm

   Brash uses the race relations stuff to hook the rednecks in (a lot of whom are economically damp), and then unleashes the neo-liberal stuff.

   That’s why he unleashed the need not privilige speech in 2004. It was a sort of whistle up, and allowed the focus to go on him and his party.

   The Maori-bashing is just a ruse. His real intention is not to bash Maori, but to bash anyone in a job at less than 50,000 per year, Maori are just collateral damage.

Links to post

1. The Standard: posted on 29 November 2010 at 12:41 am
2. Jeremy Greenbrook: posted on 29 November 2010 at 12:56 am

• Comments are now closed

• Log in
• Donate
• Contribute post

• Articles RSS