NZ National Party: Dumpster Fire with Good PR
- James Raffan
- May 2, 2020
There are a lot of National supporters saying that because Simon ‘I’ll cancel the minimum wage increase’ Bridges is such a dumpster fire, they won’t vote for them this election.
Despite the fact that our covid19 response is the envy of people the world over and has been praised by the World Health Organisation themselves Simon ‘I voted against marriage equality’ Bridges took it upon himself to criticise the government’s covid19 response online. He was eviscerated in the comment section with people decrying it as devoid of empathy, tone deaf and political suicide. Even long time National supporters have been trying to distance themselves from Simon ‘I want to kill off the Maui dolphin’ Bridges.
Here’s the thing though, Simon ‘I don’t care if old people die, I care about the economy’ Bridges IS the National Party: economy focused, devoid of empathy, blind to their privilege and completely tone deaf- as well as out of touch with the reality most of NZ are living. The difference is that (for some reason) people liked John Key. He was the smiling assassin, but sadly Simon ‘opened up conservation land for coal mining’ Bridges doesn’t have that acting ability. ‘Tax cuts for every day New Zealanders’, however untrue, sounds more appealing than ‘I don’t mind if kids go hungry, if their parents would work harder then maybe they’d deserve to get fed.’
No one, except perhaps his own party supporters, was surprised when he went on to defend his statements. What more could we expect from a ‘leader’ who called one of his own MPs ‘fucking useless’, who slammed the government for ‘not doing enough’, then drove 1000km out of his bubble to attend a zoom meeting and who spent $113k on limousines.
Now we have a bunch of National voters suddenly wanting to distance themselves from the values of the party they support. The party with MPs who think domestic violence is funny, who are happy to commit fraud, and who are so corrupt that someone even wrote a book about it.
To be clear: National supporters voted for healthcare sector cuts, leaving our system chronically under resourced. That was the government they wanted. They wanted a government that would give tax breaks to the rich. They wanted a government who would punish poor people because ‘if they just worked HARDER’, they wouldn’t be poor.
You don’t have to look too far to figure out that the true dumpster fire here is the National Party itself. Simon Bridges is just a flaming bag of dog shit within it.