A friend has just rung to excitedly inform me that National’s conservation policy has now also been released by Trevor Mallard.
That means there is officially a leak in the National Party caucus.
I expect in the next hour or so the Nats are going to start their misdirection campaign and I expect it will include lines like ‘this has been stolen from us’, ‘the Prime Minister must tell us what her involvement is’ and ‘we are the victims of theft and will be bringing the police into this’.
In short, they will do anything they can to direct the story away from the real issue, which is who is leaking from their caucus and what this means for John Key and his leadership.
We’ve seen this Crosby Textor tactic over and over again and we’ve seen the media buy it over and over again.
They bought the “stolen emails” misdirection during the Hollow Men scandal (even though the documents included diary entries and a handwritten fax)
They bought the “dirty tricks” misdirection during the secret agenda scandal (even though the Nats were secretly interrogating and vetting their own activists)
They even started to buy the carefully arranged rubbish misdirection until the absurdity of it was pointed out by various MPs and blogs.
So in a few hours when National try to cry wolf again will the media swallow it?
Sadly, I think they will.
UPDATE: Frogblog weighs in.
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