It is, quite frankly, feeble. Attempting to explain the true situation to any of them on their respective blogs is an exercise in futility and a complete waste of time. Those blogs come complete with commenter-goons, whose self-appointed task it is, to frustrate reasoned debate and demean any commenter who isn't dyed true-blue. My dear friend and dinosaur, Jabba, typifies this breed of Nat with his dull comments and relentless ad hominems but there are worse.
What's most galling is the willingness of Jabba and his ilk, and the bloggers themselves, to maintain their misleading, dishonest blog titles and claims regardless of information provided by the brave souls from the Left who can be bothered engaging on those blogs. However, David Farrar's Kiwiblog today provided a nice example of how dishonest posting can be exposed by the simple provision of facts.
He, like Ludmann and KS, have whipped themselves into a lather over the removal from the candidate list by the Green executive of David Hay. The Right claim the Greens have destroyed their credibility by doing this, despite their own party's exact-same behaviour in the past. Without going into the details, which reveal that the story told by those blue-bloggers is falsely presented, here's the comment by at Kiwiblog that patiently exposes the technique used by National Party shill-bloggers, and tells the true story. Farrar claims:
So the Greens are now the party where if you declare you want to stand for the leadership, you get banned from candidacy. Sounds like the current co-leaders are very desperate to avoid a vote. I suspect their concern if not that Norman would beat Hay, but that the size of the protest vote for Hay could show how much discontent there is.
Chardonay Guy responds:
David, surely this is basic party discipline at work? Would someone who challenged Key’s leadership be similarly welcome within the National caucus? And look at the civil war that convulsed ACT in the Key administration’s first term over Rodney Hide’s leadership, as well as the New Zealand First schism in 1998. How is this any different?
Sorry, but what is going here seems little different from ACT (2002-2005). In that case, Heather Roy and Rodney Hide were at each others throats and Sir Roger was evidently not a very happy chappy. One cannot have constant internal sniping and disunity within a parliamentary caucus or potential candidacy and expect to be lauded for parliamentary stability. Why criticise the Greens for behaving like a responsible, disciplined political party instead of process-obsessed ineffectual leftist pressure group? Oh.
Dear ol' Toad adds:
The recommendation to refuse Hay’s entry to the candidate pool was made in September. His leadership bid was in response to that, not the other way around as you suggest DPF.
In short, what Hay did in 2011 was attempt to campaign for the electorate vote in Epsom, despite a clearly articulated nationwide party strategy to campaign for only the party vote. This was particularly important in Epsom, where many Greens were holding their noses and voting for National’s Paul Goldsmith in order to try to stop the odious John banks from taking the electorate.
…National’s Board uses it very very rarely, and basically only uses it for people who are “mad” or “bad”.
Which was Roger Payne?
This sort of 'interaction' is typical of this level of political action and can make an ordinary sort of bloke like me feel jaded. However, I'm buoyed by the clarity brought to these skirmishes by the likes of ChardonayGuy and Toad (Armchair Critic and Viv) along with Judge Holden, Edward the Confessor and others, all of whom are regarded as trolls, commies, whatever, on the Tory-blogs, or banned altogether in order to lessen their 'disinfecting' effects on the Right-wing blogs.
Go the Good Guys!
