Miranda Devine, Tony Abbott, and the chattering classes blather away

(Above: the ordinary common or garden set of shacks where average 'at one with the masses' dudes go for an average education which helps them fit in with the masses).

One day in, and already the commentariat is busy beavering away, and who better to beaver at the soft, white-anted liberal woodwork than Miranda the Devine in her column, ETS may be for Rudd what Work Choices was for Howard.

The Devine of course speaks for all women:

As for Abbott's lack of female appeal, he's decisive, fit and virile, for starters, hardly a turn-off to women, although if we could make one request, it would be to pack away the budgie smugglers.

We make one request? Speak for yourself, you silly ditz. Enough with this manly man chatter, and talk of virility and the wild sowing of seeds, as if we're reading an Ayn Rand novel.

For starters, what about the ears? Can they be packed away, or perhaps nipped and tucked?

Never mind, he'd make any woman with a divine mindset a divine catch:

He's a rugby playing, boxing Rhodes Scholar every bit as credentialled as Turnbull, though without the obsession with money. He's active in his community - a surf lifesaver and a volunteer firefighter.

He doesn't care about money or Sydney real estate, and he trained to be a priest? Eek. But of course by now you should have realised that this is just idle chattering talk from the idle elite, beneath contempt, and to be expected of someone who grew up in the bush. How sad that I didn't grow up in the eastern suburbs, and therefore have a much better idea of how I'm not at one with the masses in the way the Devine is profoundly mass-like:

It is the lot of a successful conservative party to be unfashionable, because the more in tune it is with its base the less popular it is with the chattering classes, who define themselves by how they differ from the masses. But outflanking the social conservative Kevin Rudd from the left was never a viable option.

Now the Liberals are at one with Barnaby Joyce, mad uncle Wilson "Ironbar" Tuckey, Bronwyn Bishop, George Pell and Miranda the Devine, so all is well with the world.

And if healing is the aim, Abbott has already mended the rift with the Nationals. The Coalition is back, with Barnaby Joyce embracing the leadership of his fellow St Ignatius College, Riverview, alumnus.

Ah yes, at one with the St Ignatius College, Riverview masses. What a splendid way to educate the masses. Why not enrol your child today for an education at one with the masses. $12 to $18k a year should see you and your child well done (here). Then you too can blather on at length about the chattering class, and how you're at one with the masses. (or alternatively you might learn how to discreetly jerk your chain in private - they do teach manners at Riverview, or so I'm reliably told).

Never mind, the more you hate them, the stronger they'll grow:

John Howard wore the Howard-haters like a badge of courage. The more they piled on the invective, the greater the public desire to give him a fair go. For Abbott, the more intemperate and irrational the Abbott-haters, the stronger he will become.

But what if you laugh at them? Never mind, that would establish you as one of those odd people who think Abbot is the mad monk incarnate:

The vitriol began the moment the party room yesterday endorsed Tony Abbott as Liberal leader. The women of the twitterverse, the ABC and Crikey.com agreed Abbott's election was a disaste. He's a right-wing Catholic extremist. He'll never get the women's vote. The people who voted for him were troglodytes.

Which is why of course the Devine had to be vitriolic about the vitriolic the moment they began to throw around the vitriol like holy water. Now everybody is in step:

Abbott learnt from Howard to never get too far ahead of the party room. He was the one in step with the zeitgeist. Turnbull and his supporters were fighting the last battle, in denial about the sea change in community sentiment on the Government's emissions trading scheme, just as Turnbull fought the wrong battle in the republican debate, unwilling to acknowledge the direct electionists' case.

Ah yes, in step with the Wilson Tuckey zeitgeist.

So now the mad monk is going to launch an immediate campaign in favour of the direct electionists' republican case, so we can avoid that aspirational tampon, and global warming extremist, bonnie Prince Chuck, becoming our monarch?

Dream on, the contradictions are so huge, even Walt Whitman couldn't solve or embrace or encompass them.

No, what's going to happen is a simple minded fear campaign about a huge tax, which worked terribly well at overturning John Howard and defeating the GST. Oh wait I must go buy something and pay my GST (never ever, read my lips?) Tony Abbott is going to battle climate change without an impost? How interesting ... do go on.

Better yet, why not take a completely irrational swipe at the return of interest rates to more typical post recession nee depression levels? (Abbott's first big lie: interest rates).

Abbott landed other blows at his first news conference, referring to the national broadband network mess, and linking Rudd's ''irresponsible spending spree'' to yesterday's interest rate rise. It's a charge that resonates, and which inexplicably Turnbull never managed to prosecute.

Perhaps because it's stupid, or does that sound too elitist? Come on down economics elitist Michael Pascoe:

Well that didn’t take long: a few minutes into his first news conference Tony Abbott made his first big lie as Liberal Party leader, only to be called on it less than three hours later by no less an authority than the Reserve Bank of Australia.

And in the process, Abbott signalled his intent to continue the opposition’s form of running wildly populist and irrational GFC commentary – the Daily Telegraph of political economics ....

... How delightful to be in a country where interest rates are being gradually edged back to only mildly stimulatory.

Never mind, the Devine sees victory for conservative Catholicism just around the corner, so we can have someone even madder than the Christian Chairman Rudd at the helm, with the Pellist heresy whispering in Abbott's ear:

If Rudd is rash enough to call a double dissolution, the Liberals at last have a platform and a leader who is a rational communicator. No jargon or doublespeak from Abbott. His clarity of thought and language will expose Rudd as the emperor with no clothes.

Clarity of thought in toeing the Pellist heresy line?

Well Abbott had better learn something about inclusion and reaching for the middle and the swinging voters quick stix, and he ain't going to get that by reading Miranda the Devine. Because if he thinks the Devine speaks for all women, he's even more deluded than she is ... and Julia Gillard will see to that.

Which is about the only thing that the Devine gets right. It'll be Gillard v Abbott, and let's see who's the last man standing.

Meantime, one last rite of passage for Malcolm, no longer in the middle, and expected to take no part in the war against Xmas:

Malcolm Turnbull's the name and I served on the Liberal train
'Til Nick Minchin's cavalry came and tore up the tracks again
In the spring of '09, we were hungry, just barely alive
By December the 1st, Canberra had fell
It's a time I remember, oh so well

The night they drove old Malcolm down
And the bells were ringing
The night they drove old Malcolm down
And the people were singing
They went, "La, la, la"

Back with my wife in Woollahra, when one day she called to me
"Malcolm, quick, come see, there go the Joe B Hockey"
Now I don't mind stacking ballots, and I don't care if the money's no good
Ya take what ya need and ya leave the rest
But they should never have taken the very best

The night they drove old Malcolm down
And the bells were ringing
The night they drove old Malcolm down
And all the people were singing
They went, "La, la, la"

Like Peter King before me, I worked the eastern suburbs land
And like Brendan above me, I took a rebel bikie alt indie stand
He was just fifty one, proud and brave, but a ballot laid him in his grave
I swear by the mud below my feet
You can raise a squillionaire back up when he's in defeat

The night they drove old Malcolm down
And the bells were ringing
The night they drove old Malcolm down
And all the people were singing
They went, "Na, na, na"

The night they drove old Malcolm down
And all the bells were ringing
The night they drove old Malcolm down
And the people were singing

They went, "Na, na, na"