The Mad King is in it deep now, from the AFR:
The federal government has failed to convince the public of the merits of its budget, helping explain why it has shifted its election message to a scare campaign over asylum seekers and a Labor/Greens alliance.
As Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull spent Wednesday defending controversial comments by Immigration Minister Peter Dutton concerning illiterate and innumerate refugees taking Australian jobs, comprehensive research into the budget sales job, conducted by veteran pollster John Scales and his company JWS Research, finds the budget has many positive measures which the government has failed to sell.
Consequently, the overall view of the May 3 budget – which was the policy springboard for the Turnbull government’s election campaign – remains negative with just 17 per cent saying it was good for them personally and 37 per cent saying it was poor. Only 21 per cent believed it would be good for the country and 37 per cent said it would be poor.
This is what happens when you take a leader that is popular for being a centrist, policy-driven intellect and you sticky tape him to the front of a runaway troglodyte agenda. Not surprisingly, the leader begins to lose credibility. Indeed his legitimacy – his only calling card – is run down. And as the polls sink, he is boxed in. He can’t suddenly turn to rational policy like his superannuation changes because he’s got no broader narrative of mutual sacrifice through which to sell them. They appear random grabs that stoke huge protest among the affected. Moreover, his only recourse becomes more fear-mongering, dragging him even further from what made him popular in the first place.
In the end you are left with no platform of substance and accelerating arbitrariness, groups of pissed off interests and broad disgust for a man that stands for nothing.
In short, you render yourself unelectable.
