But not in the way that Chris Trotter (A Failure of Tone: The National Party’s Week of Woe) and the rest of the Left are.
For me this is letting other people watch the NZ MSM so that I don’t have to and unfortunately it’s entirely predictable, unsurprising and the reason I don’t watch or read their crap.
The article, Mistress Tova’s latest discipline session, deals with National MP, Paul Goldsmith, and his recent opining about how colonisation has been good for Maori, or at least not too bad. Apparently Goldsmith has received a real pile on from Labour, Green, and Maori Party politicians as well as seemingly every Lefty activist in the nation.
But it’s these passages that are key to National’s real problem as du Fresne describes how the rest of the Party dealt with the issue:
A procession of National MPs, all looking like frightened rabbits, eagerly dissociated themselves from Goldsmith before running for the hills.
…
There is scope for a balanced, nuanced debate on the effects of colonisation, but don’t expect to see it in the mainstream media, and least of all in anything Lynch or Tova O’Brien have a hand in.And don’t expect it, either, from Goldsmith’s spineless caucus colleagues, who are so cowed by media bullying and so lacking in political conviction that they appear to have completely lost sight of what a centre-right party is supposed to stand for.
A day ending in “Y”. This is the Todd Muller show all over again, where National MP’s voided themselves about the expected failure of Bridges and made the panic room choice of Todd, which promptly blew up in their faces with the MAGA hat episode, Tova gleefully featuring in that as well.
When it comes to the National Party leader it also sounds Toddishly familiar:
No matter. It provided another opportunity to torment Collins. And once again, she meekly submitted to the dominatrix’s querulous questioning. Is there no limit to the mortification Collins is prepared to endure? I loathed the style of Robert Muldoon and Winston Peters, but sometimes I find myself wishing for a politician bold enough to put amoral, mischief-making journalists in their place.
This is the same problem the US Republican Party had up until the arrival of Trump, as I pointed out last year in Gravedodger’s piece on Muller and the MAGA hat:
The real message Muller’s action delivers is that it demonstrates that he not only does not have the courage of his convictions, he does not even have the ability to defend himself in argument or take it to the MSM.
A simple “so what?” and showing off his Clnton and Obama memorabilia should have been enough and if they persisted with this bullshit, some serves back at them about being lying lightweights.
One lesson Trump should have taught every Right-wing politician in the world is that the MSM will never give them a break and that fighting back is not just a sensible strategy but the the only one that has a hope of working. Playing nice no longer works.
Muller can hide all this stuff, but that’s not going to get the jackals off his back until he both goes around them via Social Media and gives them a regular serve as well.
So nothing has changed and no lessons have been learnt.
At this rate, when National finally win power again (2026?) they’ll probably vote more money to keep this Fourth Estate alive.
No Minister 
Aint that the truth, well over 40% waiting in vain, remember when 40% under the imposed abortion MMP was entirely regarded as more than enough to launch a government from?
I share the frustration too but in a different way. National MPs need to keep on message and a debate on the advantages/disadvantages of colonialism is a distraction from the real issues facing the country … an economy dependent on printing money Social Credit style. Labour will be loving this.
Goldsmith is the education spokesman still smarting following his demotion after having screwed up on finance. He is close to Bridges. Draw your own conclusions.
If anyone thinks a debate on colonialism will help propel National to the Treasury benches then they want their heads read.
a distraction from the real issues facing the country … an economy dependent on printing money Social Credit style.
And there it is. Classic National. Just talk about debt, spending as a % of GDP and taxes while ignoring all that mucky culture stuff and the institutions – often state-funded institutions – waging war in those areas.
The defeatist attitude of “We can’t win this argument” makes sense on a case-by-case basis in politics, but with National it seems to apply to almost everything outside of debt/spending/taxes. Also the “it’ll take care of itself” approach.
Except it won’t because politics is downstream from culture, and in this country at least the economy is downstream from politics. National will wake up ten years from now to find itself funding hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars into separatist Maori institutions and wondering how it got to that point. But they’ll be no going back because you already showed how frightened you were of being called a pack of racists.
It’ll likely also cause you to increase taxes anyway.
Actually Vet, showing some backbone and having an honest discussion on colonisation probably would propel the Nats onto the treasury benches. It nearly did that for the politically inept Don Brash.
Some honesty is what the majority of New Zealanders are looking for, especially after the current lying incompetent lot have buggered the country.
Tom,
Unlike the Republicans, the National Party does not do culture wars. The reason being that National is not nearly as uniformly conservative as the contemporary Republicans. As I am sure you know, National has always been an coalition of Liberals and Conservatives. In fact that was the essence of the origin of the Party in 1936. Look at the votes within National on most conscience issues. They are always divided among conservatives and liberals
So no, National won’t be following your prescription on the culture wars.
My prediction, there will be a substantial empowering of iwi in education, heath, housing supply and social policy in the next few years. National will go along with most of this once they are back in government, just as they have done so since 1990. In that sense Don Brash was a bit of an aberration, one that National is not keen on repeating.
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ATTENTION NATIONAL VOTERS: vote 2023 for more Wayne Mappism.
Given the degree of sneering, backhanded contempt that has been exhibited on this blog and elsewhere by “Liberals” like you towards Conservatives, those days may be coming to an end, especially since one would have to ask exactly what National Party “Conservatives” have conserved about NZ over the last fifty years?
Excellent news. I’ve been meaning to write a post on this for some time, for once the Public wall is breached by one group, others will more easily be able to follow. After all “colonialism” can mean many different things and delivering more power to the individual than the collective could be one of them, though of course Maori activists won’t see that at first – hopefully anyway.
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One that hauled your worthless backsides up from the disaster of 2002 to almost getting the prize in 2005 and laying the groundwork for that nice Mr Key to go all the way in 2008. I often wonder if Key voted for that “aberration”.
Did you?
What Tom said, and further; Mr Mapp, can you please explain why people should vote for “Labour lite but managed better” when they can get Labour hard with Jacinda & co?