The Jami-Lee Ross strategy and endgame: Possible impacts for the 2020 election
I believe Jami-Lee Ross was never going to stand in Botany to seek a by-election mandate because he was always intending to remain inside Parliament. He made the statement knowing full well National would unleash upon him all the allegations of harassment that they had helped hide. His political advisor Simon Lusk would have known this and they would have concluded that in their haste to destroy Jami-Lee Ross, National would inevitably over egg their attack and go too far.
Paula Bennett did just that with her ‘inappropriate behaviour for a married MP’ attack, and once they had ‘gone there’, Jami-Lee pulled the wounded martyr routine and announced he would stay in Parliament for self righteous utu against a corrupt leader.
If he had announced he was staying in Parliament and then National hit him with the allegations, he would have found it hard to stay in Parliament in light of those claims, that Lusk and JLR had the foresight to get their footing right from the outset should worry all because this isn’t the random madness of a rogue MP, this is cold and calculating with an agenda.
What we are witnessing is a political hit job of bewildering savagery and maliciousness. I understand the moment Simon Bridges won the leadership, dented egos started plotting.
Simon Bridges: The chinless wonder
Why isn’t Simon resonating with the rump of the National Party despite unprecedented party polling? I’ve known Simon far better than I’ve personally known any of the other National Party leaders. In private he is funny, pragmatic and clever. His external social conservative shtick is for the voting base, but Bridges is ultimately a solid person who would probably do a reasonable job of running the country.
And that’s the problem.
There is a huge electorate within National who are spittle flecked with rage over the election loss. They were robbed by the MMP commies, lesbians and Maori’s and for them, this mutation of a Government has no legitimacy.
So incandescent with rage are National rump voters, that they actually hate the PMs baby, hate the fact the PM is a young unmarried woman and hate any suggestion of kindness.
The right wing of NZ have become as twisted with hate as the Left did over Key, except of course with Key propping up a speculative property bubble, slashing public funding, privatising welfare and implementing a mass surveillance state, anyone with a basic education had every justifiable right under the sun to be spittle flecked with rage. National Party white rage however has no such justification other than ‘change-and-difference-frighten-us-and-we-hate-things-that-frighten-us-what-the-hell-is-uber-eats’.
Simon can’t connect with his supporters irrational anger because that’s not really the person he is, as such he comes across as flat, rudderless and without purpose or direction. With people around him with far more ambition than talent, it was only a matter of time before his inability to channel his inner redneck to connect with his book burning supporters would be used against him.
Jami-Lee Ross: A neanderthal hairplug looking for a homicide
One of the reasons this implosion is so dirty and nasty is because JLR was a chief whip and bagman. He knows where many of the bodies are buried because he helped put them there. His ruthlessness and arrogance have been highlighted by his bullying and harassment of anything with a pulse and general contempt for any inanimate object that doesn’t pose an immediate benefit to him. With an ethical code that would make your average drug cartel blush and look away in disgust, JLR is a right wing creature devoid of the usual moral safeguards and his desire to destroy Simon Bridges over little more than a professional slight by being demoted combined with a grotesque sense of self importance has set JLR on a behind the lines guerrilla mission to destabilise the Party.
Simon Lusk: Something evil this way slithers
Lusk’s weird love of destroying people that he shared with Slater is well documented in Hager’s Dirty Politics. He has detailed that his political strategy is to inject venom into politics so that ordinary voters who can’t stand the sleaze don’t vote leaving the minority to win.
- Lusk and Slater charge aspiring National politicians to help them win candidate selection in National safe-seats by running attack campaigns against their opponents.
- The book documents an extensive smear campaign in the Rodney electorate in 2011, in which Lusk and Slater successfully elected their client Mark Mitchell, who is now the MP for Rodney.
- Lusk was hired by Brash to help replace Rodney Hide as leader of the ACT Party. Lusk – evidently without Brash’s knowledge – found out from Jordan Williams that Rodney Hide had been sending ‘dodgy texts’ to a young woman. Slater published hints about this on his blog and Lusk proposed that they approach Hide quietly and ‘tell Hide that someone had the texts and will release them if he doesn’t resign by Friday’. Hide resigned.
Duncan Garner alleged during the 2014 election that Lusk took money to bribe Maori voters to vote against Hone Harawira.
Later in Story last Monday, TV3 reporters quizzed several MPs in Parliament about their relationships with Simon Lusk. The discomfort of some was clear. Evidently the exposure of Dirty Politics hasn’t scared off all his political clients. Duncan Garner also revealed supporters of Labour’s Napier MP Stewart Nash paid Simon Lusk to canvas the option of a new political party, and that Simon Lusk had told him Labour MP Phil Twyford would be his next target.
Simon Lusk also claimed on Story he had been instrumental in unseating Mana Party co-leader Hone Harawira in the last election. Unnamed “businessmen” had paid thousands for that, he said. And in conversation with his co-host last Monday, Duncan Garner said money had been paid to get Maori electors to vote in Te Tai Tokerau.
Lusk is a political strategist who is so dangerous the National Party tried to formally push him and Slater away in 2013…
National turns on hard right advisor
Simon Lusk pushed to get rid of the “wet wing” and make sure MPs obeyed donors. Now a leaker has revealed his agenda in an attempt to discredit him
Leaked documents written by a political strategist who has trained National MPs set out a vision for taking the party to the right of the political spectrum, tripling donations to $6 million a year and using donations and government jobs as inducements to control MPs.
Lusk believes the dirtier the politics, the more people disengage, the easier it is for the Right to win. He and Slater have this warped fantasy of igniting white rage and harnessing it electorally.
Judith Collins: “I’m not a Monster” hissed the monster
When you privately ask why the power brokers of the National Party do everything in their power to stop Judith gaining the leadership, the answer is simple, they are terrified with what she would do with power. Her version of hate inspired politics would go full Trump, she would exploit cultural fault lines and have no problems declaring martial law at the drop of a hat.
My deep suspicion is that she is ultimately the one pulling all the puppet strings here, and the set up of JLR in Parliament attacking Bridges every week helps one person and one person only – Judith.
The endgame:
With JLR now entrenched in Parliament, he will use the protection of Parliamentary Privilege to continue drip feeding damaging material about Simon and any of those on the front bench defending Simon. It will get nastier and dirtier, but Lusk wants that because it turns people off voting.
JLR will wage a campaign against Bridges and as the damage sheets home, the Party in desperation will turn against Bridges towards the only person they think will be strong enough to lead, Judith Collins.
Judith will miraculously gain an immediate state of peace with JLR, the price probably being him running a new sexist right wing party uncontested in Botany while Mark Mitchell fleshes out a New Conservative Party in Rodney.
National know that need allies to win 51% and two minor electorate based parties using MMP coat-tailing is the best way to do that.
Political Guru Bryce Edwards has argued this is extra vile because there isn’t really a policy difference here, and he’s partially correct. This isn’t about policy, it’s about style, Judith wants to kneecap her enemies and bring a level of Trumpian malignancy to NZ politics that other politicians would find sickening.
A dirty politics campaign that purposely drives away voters so only the most radicalised vote is a page out of the Lusk playbook and using that campaign to take the National Party leadership to create a multi-pronged right wing party is a kind of evil genius.
2020:
So, if Bridges is forced to step down because JLR runs a character assassination program against him and Judith is elected, she would want to grant JLR and Mark Mitchell their electorate based side project political parties with the hope National+ACT+Chauvinist Pigs United + New Conservatives can get 51% of Parliament.
If TOP run a better campaign, they will not get above 5%, but they will cannibalise the Greens under 5%. Unfortunately the Greens have lost themselves in alienating woke revisionism and are currently reading poems to their electric vegan bikes. They are the political equivalent of a fart in an elevator.
Labour will hope to have something to show those who trusted them with their vote and do better than their 2017 result while NZ First will just be praying Winston continues to defy every death calculator and somehow lives another 3 years.
Right now many on the left are loving the National Party implosion, but I fear the people deeply involved in this have far darker agendas and because of those machinations, there’s no certainty 2020 will see Jacinda re-elected.
then again..
http://www.whoar.co.nz/2018/op-ed-the-national-party-2018-is-the-natural-child-outcome-of-neoliberalism/
So basically if the Labour press harder, give NZFirst an Air Comabat force training squadron of 6 surplus U.S. f16’s and give the Greens a Benifit increase or two and legalise the marijuanas. National might purge some crazies? sounds like a double win for left leaning voters to me.
yep..i am hoping this will empower/energise labour…to get the shit done that needs to be got done..toot suite…!
Climate change should have been enough for Labour to go hard out. Now they’ve got no excuse. We were promised a government that was ready to go. Now go.
Are you perhaps not reading too much into this, are we not perhaps dealing with endless nasty minded opportunists, all out there to gain some ground and posts and money?
Lusk is a noble primitive hunter and gatherer type of person, a nasty piece of work, but that is just what many Nats love. Sadly a vanity driven, self entitled prick like Ross put the dagger into their backs, because he expected to be rewarded for his great manipulative skills, also at conning people into making donations.
It was HIM who got the Chinese to donate so much money, Bridges would have been too dumb and incompetent, and disconnected to get so much out of wealthy Chinese in Botany and so.
So Jami Lee turned the table against his master, portraying it like it was Bridges getting the donation organised, while he was doing it himself. Jami Lee Ross has now been exposed as the greatest manipulator there is in NZ politics, and he is digging his own grave.
One has to worry about his well being, and especially that of his cheated wife, and so on, there could be very serious consequences, I fear, very serious ones, let us hope they do not crack up totally and do some self harm or so.
Marc, you may be over-estimating Ross’s skills here in thinking that the Chinese gentlemen concerned would not have donated but for Jami-Lee Ross. They’re quite keen givers.
Implying that Simon Lusk is a noble sort of primitive hunter is way off beam too. Read “Dirty Politics”. See for yourself, in their own written words, how these prime manipulators hope to get far-right in control of NZ politics for the next 20 years. Their own words. It’s all long term strategy.Read what turns Simon Lusk on.
I don’t know what current MP’s apart from Ross, Mark Mitchell and Louise Upston, paid Lusk to help get them into power, but immersion in character assassination, and negativity, and playing dirty, and the maintaining of on-going links with Lusk – friend of Cameron Slater and other interesting people -could be a challenge to even mentally healthy people. They could all have blistered brains by now. Add in ‘proclaimed Christian’ and you’ve got a putrid potion.
Many of the protagonists in “Dirty Politics” appear to be obsessive nutters. They sound like my brother’s comics except this is real life. Sure, there are nasty little opportunists in Parliament, and if they want to feather their own nests, well, that’s what happens, but the greedy are an insidious bunch who see power as an end in itself, think that the end justifies the means, and see everybody else as tools and fools.
How about reading the book and seeing what they say about themselves and each other ? Keep a bowl handy in case you need to puke – or just sit in the gutter.
Lusk is a hunter wanna be but wouldn’t find his way past the paddock gate.
General derision of hunters noted though marc. A recurring theme in the greens and all inherently superior identity politicians.
What a complete mess of a post that is. Why don’t you think like an adult for 5 minutes.
TOP? Why are you even wasting zeros and ones on that non entity?
And as for describing Edwards as a political guru – you have truly lost it there. He’s a National plant.
I tried to think like an adult for 5 minutes. That made me burst out laughing at a mindset which accepts the mechanics and logistics of getting Edwards into the position of being a National plant.
What’s your point, MB, aside from your digs at Martyn??
What’s bothering you muttonbird?
You seem cranky, the world isn’t all bad, outside here the sun is shining, spring is springing.
It’s unlikely any of us will solve the worlds problems in the comment section of political blogs..
Heavy waters indeed,… but then , going by recent past events it seems likely that this is the ploy… The Hollow Men , Dirty Politics…
Its all starting to ring true.
But its not just backed by the politicians themselves…there are powerful lobby groups , – and some of a geopolitical nature involved,… that’s how serious this is getting.
National must be kept out at all costs if we want to have a sovereign nation where we the people determine our own futures..
“Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.”
George Bernard Shaw
I really don’t know if anything that is happening to National at this time is particularly scientific. I see the Godfather of this vintage of the National Party, John Key, is now being dragged into it with further email threats. That is fucking karma!
And I do not think for one moment that TOP is going to do any better than any other arrogant millionaires vanity project we have seen, especially since the money and its wealthy creator is no longer there.
Ross is the spawn of a particularly corrupt form of politics in this country, one where the leader of the National Party/PM himself had that disgraceful political smear machine operating from his office. I can recall the words to the effect from Key, goading Labour across the floor in parliament about having a drawer full of dirt on them, that is before we all learnt of their dirty politics machine.
The infection that Key and his millionaire ilk were to politics in this country did permanent damage and Ross is simply a natural byproduct of that way of thinking.
Did the National Party never once stop to think that that this virulent strategy of dishonesty and moral and ethical bankruptcy they visited upon us, so entrenched in their lust to be winners, would not end like this at some point?
Jami Lee Ross, Todd Barclay, Aaron Gilmore and lord knows who else from this revolting political entity were the new standard bearers for the Key era.
The real suprise is it has taken this long for the chickens to start coming home to roost.
An excellent analysis Martyn, and I fear Judith Collins’s hand in all this runs deeper than has been realised. What is shocking is that the MDM hasn’t picked up on this.
I watch Jami-Lee Ross’s radio interview and when he kept talking about how the ‘rules of politics have changed and personal stuff is on the table now’ I realised that it was pure Lusk.
It’s not certain yet that politics has in fact changed but Lusk is certainly doing his best to make it happen.
Our choice is to join in the hate fest or to make peace with people on the right. We should be looking to unite with those on the right to get rid of Lusk and his crew in the same way we would if Aliens were looking to take over the planet.
After that we can go back to arguing about left v right but right now there’s more important things to think about.
The radio interview imo played out very well for Ross
This isn’t news its PR in favour of Bridges pitched as news, but it is biased as ‘F’ in every direction. This is just Nazi propaganda can’t believe a word of it. They’re all shame full none of them should have the chance to run the country.
“wasted votes” boosted that 49.2% at the ballot to 52.6% of seats in the House.’
shocking. what is happening to stop this?
Yes it is shocking.
At present nothing is happening to stop this – it’s baked into the version of MMP we are using.
Thousands of people each election vote for a party and if that party doesn’t meet the threshold then their vote gets reallocated to parties that meet the threshold. Anywhere else it’d be called vote rigging.
I’ve raised this with the Electoral Commission and they deny that wasted votes get redistributed. On a technicality they don’t get directly re-allocated in the Sainte-Lague method – but in actuality that is what happens in effect.
I’m doing a bunch of research at present and looking to start a campaign to sort this out. Won’t be easy as the main parties like the status quo that they benefit from.
Wow this really is a plot so cunning you could definitely pin a tail on it and call it a weasel. So does JLR’s short spell in the hospital fit into the strategy too? They certainly are playing a long game and going for broke! But I believe it could be within the realms of possibility… Operators operating and all that, explains why JLR was taping and trying to entrap his boss whilst still on the inners so to speak. However the selling of list spots rather undoes your good opinion of Bridges no matter how much of a nice guy he is out of public. The Nats def need to get another support party in the wings for next election…keep writing as the plot thickens and unfolds very good reading and it just might play out like you say.. But woe is me how cynical if it be true and along the continuum of the Saudi playbook and look where that ended. Or…Whale oil:Breitbart, Lusk:Steve Bannon, JLR: Trump?