During the 2006 election cycle, would-be Representative Tan Nguyen tried to lie his way to victory with a letter telling immigrants they had no right to vote, and threatening them with unspecified "danger" if they tried.
Now, some bright bulbs in Australia's Liberal party have been caught distributing pamphlets under the Labor party logo that include ginned-up laudatory statements from fake Islamist extremists supporting the Labor party. Like so:
In the leaflet, which carries the Labor Party logo, a fake organisation - the Islamic Australia Federation - applauds Labor for supporting Islamic extremists.
It refers to the men imprisoned for the 2002 nightclub bomb attacks in Bali, which left more than 200 people dead.
"We gratefully acknowledge Labor's support to forgive our Muslim brothers who have been unjustly sentenced to death for the Bali bombings," it said.
Labor supported the building of new mosques, the leaflet added, thanking the party for backing the entry of controversial cleric Sheikh Taj el-Din al-Hilali - who likened scantily-clad women to uncovered meat.
Brilliant.
Much as the Orange Country Republican party quickly kicked Tan Nguyen to the curb, PM John Howard's Liberal party has already distanced itself from this bit of ridiculous fearmongering. The Liberal party should take note, however, of the consequences of the Orange County tumult -- the party distanced itself not only from the effort, but from Tan Nguyen, giving the election up as lost. This seems like an unsatisfactory result for the Liberal party and for Howard in particular.
The take-home lesson may be "hire fewer idiots."
As a follow-up on Tan Nguyen, it's interesting to note that he ran first as a Democrat and then as a Republican in back-to-back election cycles, and despite a very forgiving investigation that basically let the letter off as a "mistranslation," continues to deny knowing anything about it...even though that same forgiving investigation concluded that he did.
When winning is the overriding goal, you can be confident the shell is hollow.