Battle of the Teams

One of the crazy things about our political system is how the major parties have exploited the "footy team" concept and have created a supporter base that is partisan and one eyed.

It’s as though they have copied the play book that has been so successfully exploited by the AFL and applied it to the political process. Each have managed to convince their supporters that their team is the only one with all the answers.

This is all about capturing and exploiting the fears of those people who really can’t think for themselves and channeling their uncertainty into support for one or other of the political teams. It’s about developing a class of supporters known as the "rusted on’s". It’s quite a feat when you think about it.

You only have to look at the answers to the regular Newspoll questions that are broken down along major party lines to see the extent of this. For example, in a recent survey about the "Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme" we can see a key difference between Labor and Liberal supporters - as follows.

CPRS	Labor	Liberal	Difference
In Favour	68%	48%	20%
Against	27%	48%	21%
Uncommitted	5%	4%	1%

It is clearly not plausible to suggest that either the Labor or Liberal supporters who participated in this survey - are exclusively knowledgeable on this issue so why the large differences?

There are a number of possibilities but my theory is that they are merely following the lead that has been set for them by their "political team".

In other words they are sheep meandering along the path that has been defined for them by the wolves who are masquerading as the political machine.

Another example of democracy at work under our party system.