Andrew Bolt gets demonised from the Left and the centre, and from some embarrassed sections of the Right, for his tendentious newspaper columns and his table-thumping Sunday morning TV show.
That’s the Bolt everyone sees. The look-at-me journalist who selects his topics for their entertainment value and pretends to be upset when he causes so much distress.
But what about the Bolt beyond journalism? The man who has positioned himself as the underpinning conscience of the Abbott government. The man whose policies on climate change, refugees, economic rationalism, the ABC, racial discrimination, the arts and many more subjects are so closely synchronised with the government’s policies, and laws, they could have been made around the cabinet table.
That’s the Andrew Bolt who casts the shadow. The Andrew Bolt beyond journalism. The compatriot. He who is obeyed.
He obviously feels an entitlement to being obeyed – but he has no control over Turnbull.
Don’t you mean he who works for he who is obeyed? Bolt is only a megaphone for Murdoch, the neo-con kingmaker to the world.
All the noise in the last 2 days about leadership in the Liberal party has come only and entirely from Bolt.
Not Turnbull.
Not Abbott.
Not the Liberals.
Why? I can only speculate that even Bolt is alarmed about the heavy going Abbott is experiencing over his budget and is pre-empting any move to make a challenge from Turnbull more difficult.
zut Just as the bolt in turn must obey the murdorc doctrine and desire on the direction of Australian politics.
The trick is, Bolt only got “obeyed” when the coalition was in opposition.
Now the govt is in power, they’ve got to let the Bolt know who actually holds the levers. (Hint: For the vast majority of the punters, it’s not Gina.)
Imagine JWH being afraid of the Bolta. He’d have laughed him out of the room and seen him off like the mangy cur he is.