It’s so marvelously symbolic of the “Psycho” Morrison Government. The fact that the NSW brand of the Liberal Party is at war with its own PM says it all about his personal toxicity, belief system and political failure:
The New South Wales Liberal state executive is trying to negotiate a plan for branch preselections before Friday to avoid federal intervention, which would almost certainly trigger a legal challenge just weeks from the federal election campaign.
Some members of the state executive have put forward a proposal to hold so-called fast-tracked plebiscites in all remaining seats where there is a challenger. These include seats held by two ministers – Sussan Ley in Farrer and Alex Hawke in Mitchell – and factional power broker Trent Zimmerman in North Sydney.
…Ninety per cent of the 28-person state executive would need to agree to the use of special powers to make the three process changes.
…However, late on Tuesday night another rival proposal involving skipping plebiscites altogether was circulated to the state executive. It proposed a factional carve-up of the winnable seats and appeared to have the backing of several senior Liberals, including Hawke.
The deal involves saving the three sitting members and putting the former Young Liberal Alex Dore into the seat of Hughes and Michael Feneley into Dobell. It also involves anointing candidates in a raft of other seats including Greenway and Eden-Monaro.
But because it requires use of special powers, it requires 90% support. Some on state state executive said the latest plan was bound to fail, and was actually designed to trigger federal intervention.
…Hawke’s future would be line-ball, as there had been several recruitment drives to the branches by rival right and centre right factions in Sydney’s north-west.
Morrison’s gaslighting of the branch aimed to parachute more of his cult members into parliament but backfired spectacularly. Potential church candidates have fled and now the incumbents, both Alex Hawke and himself, are in deep trouble.
Either he risks Hawke being booted, and why wouldn’t he be given he instigated the entire mess enraging the members, or Morrison overrides the party’s democratic process and ends up in court for god knows how long with a catastrophic hole in the LNP campaign machine.
It is a trademark “Psycho” Morrison mess in which he thought he could bully and bamboozle his way to some perverse god-given outcome with zero conception or understanding that the people he’s mowing down along the way will respond with rage.
How did it come to this? The Pentecostal duo:
The two main factions blame Mr Morrison’s close ally in NSW, Alex Hawke, the secretive Immigration Minister, for holding up the selection of candidates.
…“Hawke has been up front that elections will not give us the candidates they want,” said one participant in the negotiations. “We’re in procedural warfare. Everyone’s hands are tied.”
What kind of candidates did Morrison’s missionaries want? Over even John Howard’s dead body:
A rare, glowing endorsement written by Mr Howard for St Vincent’s Hospital cardiologist Michael Feneley labels him an “outstanding person” and an “ideal candidate”.
…“The Liberal Party is in need of candidates who have achieved esteem and success in the real world. Professor Feneley certainly falls into this category”.
The endorsement comes despite the Prime Minister’s backing for businesswomen and Pentecostal preacher Jemima Gleeson.
Finally, what is the goal of stacking the LNP with Morrison happy clappies:
Scott Morrison may be Australia’s second most famous Pentecostal after his mentor, Hillsong founder Brian Houston, but he is far from the norm. Those who subscribe to the youthful, feel-good, glam-rock, self-help teachings of the Pentecostal church tend not to be white, 50-something and male.
Elle Hardy, author of a new book on the global rise of the Pentecostal church [says] Pentecostals are increasingly “concerned with the here and now” and that secular society, or the elites, are taking over the world and they need to fight back.
“Reshaping America and the world so that Christ can return just so happens to look a lot like gaining power in the here and now,” writes Hardy.
…Hardy makes the point that Christian Dominionism is about seeing a religiously run America that conforms to Pentecostal values.
“It’s pretty clear that a lot on the religious right in America have given up on democracy, they know they have lost the battle, and you hear instead the line that the US is a republic, not a democracy,” Hardy says.
“It’s about conquering and victory. That’s where the seven mountains come in because if you can control the seven pillars of society, you can transform society.”
Donald Trump was a gift to the Pentecostalists. His rise, along with Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, lies in no small part to the rise of Pentecostals. The movement has a penchant for populist, strong-arm leaders with a flair for entertaining the masses, on one hand, while simultaneously scorning the cultural Marxists with their post-modern notions of gay marriage, gender identity, racial and sexual equality.
A 2019 US study found that 53 per cent of Pentecostals agreed that Trump had been anointed by God.
“Long a shelter for the marginalised and the dispossessed, in an age of gross inequality, Pentecostalism is becoming synonymous with an anti-liberal worldview,” writes Hardy.
Along with a raft of other bad actors, Hardy says it comes as little surprise that the “Stop the Steal” storming of the Capitol in Washington DC on January 6, 2021 involved 7M soldiers.
As one pastor who spoke to the crowd that day put it: “We are not just in a culture war, we are in a kingdom war.” At the same time, a Pentecostal magazine put up a Facebook post that said: “There are but two parties right now, traitors and patriots.”
This sectarian freakshow has no place in our politics and the NSW LNP faithful know it.
