Juli-aaaaaahhhhh

By Darryl Mason

Liberal Party activists Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt get started on their campaign to seed division in the federal Labor Party vote, by pushing deputy prime minister Julia Gillard as the person who should leading Labor into the next election.

After all, Kevin Rudd is a one term prime minister, or so goes the new chant, even though polls show nothing like the anger and outrage against Rudd that professional Liberal Party activist-columnists, including Miranda Devine, claim is running wild across the land.

You know what's coming next, don't you? A full-blown campaign from the Friends Of The Liberal Party in the opinion pages of, mostly, the Murdoch media claiming that Gillard "has almost got the numbers" and "is set to challenge for the leadership of the Labor Party."

It's early March now, the election is likely to arrive before late November, so they'll need at least four months to really get those Gillard Vs Rudd rumours flaming up, after they light the first fires of course.

So expect rumours along the lines of "Senior Labor Party officials believe Rudd is dooming the government to one term" and "Gillard knows she can win where Rudd cannot" to start flooding the gruesomely predictable opinion pages of the Herald Sun, the Daily Telegraph and The Australian in a month or so. Paul Sheehan from the Sydney Morning Herald can be relied on to join in the chanting, too.

Murdoch-funded Liberal Party activists like Andrew Bolt want to get started now, he's champing at the bit, but he knows it's still a bit too soon.

First, Glenn Milne has to fill a Sunday Telegraph page with "leaks" from "senior government figures", and then it's on.

Not the federal Labor government leadership challenge, just the column filler that will breed more columns and heated talkback debate. Anything, anything, to avoid devoting all but the most hostile attention to The Greens, who are shaping up to gain control of the Senate.

The 20th century newspapers have to at least try and give the impression that they can still influence the outcome of elections, even if they no longer really believe it themselves.

And it surely must be only a matter of weeks now before some Liberal Party politician embarrasses himself by claiming Kevin Rudd is an "Epic Fail."

Or maybe they're saving that for some of their 'hip' new campaign ads?

March 10 update : And so it begins, earlier than I predicted :

"Jones and I aren't alone among conservatives for falling for a politician whose choice of books now suggests she's readying to take over from the increasingly friendless Kevin Rudd."

"Watch your back Kevin."

"So while we love challenger Gillard now...."

She's already challenging Kevin Rudd for leadership of the Labor Party? Scoop!

And this note of warning :

"I fear this love for La Gillard may well end in tears, like Act 5 of Romeo and Juliet itself."

Julia Gillard will appear one day to be dead, and Australian conservative journalists will commit suicide and then Gillard will wake up from her sleep to find them all dead and then kill herself out of intolerable grief and loss?

And, man, and I thought I had some weird fantasies :

Has (Julia Gillard) bent global warmist Tim Flannery over the dispatch box in the middle of Question Time and administered a richly deserved spanking with a dead penguin....?

Weirdo.