LNP’s MOthers Day Launch Screw The Lunch Mum (ODT)

Rolling out John Howard in marginal electorates may not be the best tactic since he represents the “golden era” before this unsettled Coalition Government.

JOHN HOWARD has been exhumed as the great grey hope and is being paraded among the marginal electorates to enthuse the faithful and woo the undecided — assuming, that is, that they know who he is, or at least was.

Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard have been brought into to cameo roles in the Labor campaign, but those two can be counted in living memory. Little Johnny’s reign ended some 12 years ago when a great many younger voters – who have enrolled in record numbers – were not even in their teens and will see him, if they notice him at all, as a relic from a bygone era.

His legacy, divisive at the time, is now little more than a footnote in history: gun law reform (good), the GST (reluctantly accepted), the 2001 dog whistling and deceit at the Tampa election (bad) and the loss of his Government and his own seat in 2007 (depends where you stand).

via MUNGO MACCALLUM: Leaders’ debates and ScoMo’s ghosts of elections past