Tuesday, September 15, 2015

RINOism rampant

It's not just an American phenomenon: Malcolm Turnbull has displaced Tony Abbott as Australian Prime Minister.

8 comments:

rinardman said...

So, the way this works, it's like if Ted Cruz were ELECTED President, and Mitch McConnell didn't like what he was doing, McConnell could just get the Senate Republicans to vote to let him replace Cruz? With no national election?

Well, pardon my French, but that's just f'ed up!

Deborah said...

Fifty five people can overthrow the will of the people in OZ. Sound familiar, doesn't it?

bruce said...

R-man, not quite, because your President is like our Governor General: representative of the Queen. Also all our Ministers, like your Secretary of State, we also have Attorney General etc, are "Congressmen". So our "Congressmen" are nearly equal to our PM.

But there is some truth in what you both say as we all voted for Tony this time. He's a type of Catholic conservative, leading a party of mostly WASPs (with an Armenian treasurer! Joe Hockey). That was never a good fit.
***
The thing is that Mumbles Malcolm is an aristocratic know-all, like Al Gore but less coherent (!). And he IS a Republican: wants to get rid of the Queen. And he's very classical liberal in his own mind, more of a libertarian. But so "intellectual" that yes he's a lot like your Boehner.
Myself, I admire Canada's Tories and I've had enough of all types of liberalism. When I first went to Calcutta 35 years ago and saw how good it used to be in the British days, old men would come up and say, "Come back and rule us Sahib! It was better then!"

Minicapt said...

A better comparison would be to a Congress where, if the Speaker of the House or Majority Leader in the Senate failed to meet the expectations of their caucuses, the latter would vote them out and choose 'better' replacements.

Cheers

rinardman said...

Speaker & Majority Leader aren't elected to those positions, by the people, Minicapt.

bruce said...

R-man, the PM isn't elected to his position either, he's chosen as leader by his party. That's why the party have the right to change him any time. But it's kind of rotten if like in Tony Abbott's case it was his popularity and leadership which won the election, but the party will dispute that and say it was a group effort.
So yeah, our PM = your Speaker.

Gregoryno6 said...

At moments like this, I feel sorry for anyone born without the satire gene.
MalMemes.

rinardman said...

bruce: so the people just vote for a party, not an individual. Then the party with the most votes gets to chose the PM. Got it.

As long as I've been a Blairite, you'd think I'd know that. :)