Selling your soul to the bishop for power
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2:36 pm, August 24th, 2022 - 52 comments
Categories: Hannah Tamaki, national, same old national -
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Christopher Luxon has spent the time since the Sam Uffindell saga blew up keeping a very low profile. From the looks of his facebook page he has been touring farms and schools, areas where it is usually difficult to get into trouble.
But this morning he again made a splash on the national conscience by refusing to rule out working with Destiny Church or whichever entity it metamorphises into.
He was asked this morning on Radio New Zealand if he would rule out working with Tamaki’s newly announced party Freedoms New Zealand.
Instead of giving the only possible answer, no way and no how, he said it was far too early to talk about it but he thought it was very unlikely that Freedoms New Zealand would make it into Parliament. He also said that the people who descended onto Parliament, some of them claiming that senior Government figures should be tried for treason and were guilty of crimes against Humanity, and who wanted to make the country ungovernable, should party vote National.
From Radio New Zealand:
National leader Christopher Luxon told Morning Report he did not anticipate the group making it into Parliament.
Luxon has previously been asked by media if he would work with fringe parties, but there has not been a firm answer.
Asked whether he would rule out working with the party, Luxon said it was “way too early to talk about that or speculate about it”.
He would say that about any coalition at this stage, he said.
“I think if people want to change the government, which I was united in around the protest yesterday, they should party vote National.”
This group has called for New Zealand to be ungovernable. For a major party not to rule them out summarily is astonishing.
Meanwhile Freedoms New Zealand is off to a shaky start. Brian Tamaki announced it yesterday and said that would include the New Nation Party, Vision NZ and the Outdoors and Freedom Party. This was news to the Outdoors and Freedom Party which announced that they had not yet decided on this and that there was a love-hate relationship with the Tamaki’s with a lot of their members.
Clint Smith thinks this is a strategic gamble by National who wants to gain party votes from the Bishop’s coalition. This is the only rational answer although National may have underestimated how badly it could be tainted by this.
This is absolute gold for the left. Chaos on the right and National showing that it is prepared to sell its soul to the Bishop for power.
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The non-interview this morning on Morning Report suggested to me, that Luxon has been given advice to avoid any more gaffes by avoiding unscripted comments. This means that he responded to everything by avoiding any answer. Hence he stupidly avoided the banning Tamaki's Party.
This suggest to me that he is running scared of exposing himself. No good as a nudist then.
Thank you, that is a mental image I did not need in my life!
Sheesh I was already thinking what Labour could offer Tamaki.
Make the Rainbow Nation Coalition work!
How about Tamaki for Minister of SIS? Learn to really conspire.
Or Minister of Broadcasting? For the truth.
Or responsible for the Human Rights Commission?
What about ……….. I've got it …………… Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Police?
Finally someone to make our politics as interesting as Winston did.
Ad,
I knew you were the Devil's Advocate 
Tamaki unwilling to take the pay cut involved in public office.
"Tamaki unwilling to take the pay cut involved in public office."
No he'll carry on tithing his parishioners.
What a strange Op Ed. He hasn't ruled out having jelly eels for dinner either. He probably won't but because he hasn't ruled it out, he might!
Well Jack. Will you tell me if you intend voting with Tamaki's Party?
Has he mentioned eels? Has he mentioned dinner? All in the same sentence?
He has not ruled out strangling kittens either but if he is asked this I suggest he does.
This will not go well for Luxon.
Even a perception of indecision on a matter of this importance will make some swing-voters think twice before voting for Nats.
At least John Key had the conjones and sense to rule out a certain potential coalition partner: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/67578/pm-announces-election-date,-rules-out-peters
Now what do Evangelical Bible folk have in common with Flat Earthers?
One lot believe the Earth is 4000 years old and the other the world is flat.
Luxon keeping intellectually superior company there!!/sarc
It has been a problem for them for a long time. Don Brash's dalliance with the Exclusive Brethren in 2005 arguably cost National that election.
It was an alliance with those of money – Brash would be an atheist, like Trump (who brazenly fronts for Christians as he does in taking money for charity in the Trump Foundation name).
National are a bunch of hapless amateurs. The best sales pitch ever by the best salesman ever was by Faust who sold something he didn’t have to someone who doesn’t exist. Now, that is cunning – National is halfway there.
Did he (Faust) receive a fair price?
He was probably paid with money that didn't exist, obtainable from most banks.
It was a classic win-win.
Its even worse then we thought as the tupperware party pulls out of NZ.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/129667002/the-tupperware-party-is-over-tupperware-pulls-out-of-new-zealand
One less party for Luxon not to rule out!
No Right Turn echoes Micky's thoughts:
http://norightturn.blogspot.com/
I strongly disagree with the first assessment of Luxon. He’s opposed to abortion but he won’t oppose abortion, which is a clear moral stance.
I strongly agree with the second assessment of Luxon. He’s indeed unfit for political office and only for running airlines, if that.
Or, he's in on the con.
Obscene on all counts. What's our world coming to?
The ideological adjacency of the establishment right and the revolutionary right always causes some uncomfortable evasions and verbal slithering.
Here’s a tweet from Clint Smith (missing from OP?) that aligns nicely with my thinking (but what do I know):
https://twitter.com/ClintVSmith/status/1562166723893424128
Yep that was what I was referring to but I did not embed it.
Some seem to think he has been bullied. "Repeat a lie." Joseph Goebbels.
Reminds me of the time after the 2008 election that John Key and Pita Sharples suddenly decided they loved each other and could form a government with ACT.
Power is a drug 100 times more potent than Fentanyl.
Very misleading.
Key had the numbers already on election night, including the support from ACT (Hide) that had been clearly signalled before the election. So we had a National-led government. He didn't need the Maori Party.
Sharples and Turia then had to make a decision. It wasn't Nat v Lab, it was government v opposition.
Whether they made the right decision is obviously a matter of opinion, but the arithmetic is not.
I don't know why the Luxon story should remind you of an entirely different situation.
We all know this is moot, Bishop Brian is not getting anywhere near parliament.
Nor do or ever will:
However, this doesn’t mean that such (lobby) groups don’t have influence in Parliament, sometimes considerable influence. So, it is not a moot point at all!
Or Donald Trump. I am just surprised the god botherers have never made it apart from United Future of sorts. If they orgainsed properly and united behind a decent leader they could make it. Thankfully they have never had a decent leader.
Key gave them the perfect opportunity when he signed up to the (so-called) anti-smacking law in opposition, and then as PM ignored the calls to scrap it, including the citizens-initiated referendum. Given the huge number of signatures needed to make the referendum happen, there was obviously a large pool of voters to draw from. Lots of e-mail addresses too!
But as you say, their "leaders" (principally Colin Craig and Larry Baldock) weren't up to the job. Even though "smacking" got far more traction with voters in middle NZ than anything Brian Tamaki does.
Religions have a special word for what happens to them acting as a group. "Schism". When you look at the history of every religion based parties that I am aware of in NZ (pretty much christians) , then that is what you see over and over again.
This is a small recent view (about 2020?) from wikipedia "Christian politics in New Zealand"
Somehow I don't think that a full religious based party is likely to gain a real foothold in NZ for that reason. Plus Brian Tamaki and the Density Church are hardly a viable group for most religious groups to embrace.
It'd look like the establishment of a Grifters Union.
The only successful explicitly religious party I can think of that succeeded was the Ratana party back at the start of the 20th.
Schism has drifted into secular usage as well. But nowhere near as much as in the religious area.
Wasn't he there only yesterday?
So close yet so far …
I agree. And that makes it so easy for Luxon to rule him out.
No dilemma, no quandary, and yet Luxon still fails.
From Clint Smith's tweet:
So, they're admitting the nutters in society vote for National (and ACT). Sounds right to me.
I swear this guy is scripted satire. Nobody could be that stupid, we must all be missing a mockumentary in-joke:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/129675226/parties-line-up-against-national-for-refusing-to-rule-out-working-with-brian-tamakis-freedoms-nz
Note that Luxon rules out Labour, because … Ardern is worse than Tamaki?
If it's not satire, it's Willis and Bishop whispering like Wormtongue, telling him what to say so he can lose.
The Tamaki approach is to attack government till he is on the government payroll – the Bishop wants to part of the agency of government.
Luxon wants such people to have oversight of the "unwashed masses" as NACT slash back accountable government.
Well..that would be a disturbingly dystopian future ! Especially with Brian Tamaki "blackshirts" ( thankyou Observer ! ) roaming the streets of NZ. Oh wait, they are already !
Activate. And Engage. To prevent any of this future fascist NZ.
A real miscalculation to definitively rule out a Grand Coalition with Labour but not this. Makes him look utterly immoral and power hungry.
Furthermore of all the people I know who support National (both the close-to-Act right and the more centrist who swung to Labour in 2020), none of them want a bar of Tamaki. If Tamaki's new party gains any traction at all (by no means certain) and Seymour can read the room enough to say they won't work with them, then National could bleed right-wing votes to Act and centrist votes to Labour over this issue alone.
In certain areas, Luxon and a significant number of his current MP's have theological views that are shared by Tamaki.
There is separation of Church and State for some very good reasons in this country–lets try and keep it that way.
Baldrick Luxon’s Upper Room and Destiny are retrograde outfits indeed when stacked up against 21st century challenges.
I oppose religion, apart from philosophically, on two simple initial grounds; they consistently oppress women, and indoctrinate children before they have had the chance to develop an independent world view.
With the track record of NZ Christian parties and the dodge pots involved there will likely be ample opportunity for self sabotage!
There was a cartoon with God and the Tamakis.
God was saying "Pray for the children is what I said , not Prey on the children"
(Can't find the link.)
To me it looks more like a case of Luxon not knowing what the rest of his party thinks so he is unwilling to commit himself.
If this is right then National needs to sort out its priorities, one of which would be to take a stand against anarchists, because essentially that is what Tamaki's followers are.
I actually think that most, if not all, of National would want nothing to do with Tamaki because National purportedly stands for stability, which Tamaki's followers evidently don't.
As National's leader it is up to him to make things perfectly clear, or else risk alienating the party's supporters and those who are leaning to the right.
For goodness' sake stop calling that preening mountebank a "bishop" – even in jest.
" This is absolute gold for the left "
If only we had a " left " in the true meaning of the word.
It sure as hell aint Adern , Sepuloni or Robertson.