By inviting the most rabid Big-“C” conservative to write regularly. And by not editing out the idiotic bits.
Which I suspect is exactly what the Sydney Morning Herald does with Miranda Devine. I’ve written about Miranda in the past. But her latest defence of “Howard generation’s conservatives” against allegations of election rorting suggests she is really losing the plot.
Miranda claims Howard conservatives are being wrongly accused of rorting and stacking. She mentioned former Group-staffer John Hyde-Page, whom she claims has become a “media darling” for the ABC.
She conveniently ignores the array of Howard conservatives appearing on Four Corners confirming the allegations, even admitting they participated. Michael Darby, Fran Quinn, Betty Mihic, Ken Henderson and myself are hardly tree-hugging lefties.
Miranda then insults conservatives everywhere, describing offensive behaviour by (perhaps drunken) Liberal Students as merely ...
... [b]eing openly conservative and displaying … regard for Howard.
I guess I’ll be getting a “SHUT THE F*CK UP” t-shirts to wear at the Manly polling booth next election.
Miranda then tries to flex her pseudo-conservative muscles by telling us how un-Left she is. Miranda loves to show her political erectness by defining herself by what she doesn’t stand for (instead of what she does stand for). When a conservative columnist attacks something just because it is expressed in a manner or has an outcome that someone on the Left might support, you can tell they aren’t a real conservative.
Finally, Miranda finds a way to link allegations of internal Liberal rorting to a letter some bureaucrat from the NSW Education Department wrote to the Koori Mail newspaper.
Toward the end of the Four Corners episode, Michael Darby asked Janine Cohen:
What planet are you from?Perhaps he is better off asking that question of Miranda.
