Liberal Party Implosion
And it just keeps getting better for us social democrats 
After the disastrous election defeat, the Liberals went from being invincible to pathetic. They have now been reduced to a squabbling rabble. After Howard got kicked out of his own seat mostly due to Asian-Aussies (yay! ), he passed the baton to his long suffering deputy, Peter Costello. Costello has always salivated over the PM-ship, but again and again has been denied that by Howard.
So finally when he got a chance to lead the Liberals, albeit in Opposition, he shocked his party by turning them down. He was pissed by their lack of support when he wanted to knock down Howard when they were in govt, and now he has decided they should pay for their actions by leaving them to their own devices in their time of need. Hahaha, how poetic I must say.
So with Costello quitting politics, the Liberals are headless as well as out of govt. It has three contenders for top job: Malcolm Turnbull, Brendan Nelson and Tony Abbott.
Turnbull is the new kid on the block, elected in the last election in 04 and subsequently reelected in this election. He’s a multimillionaire businessman, who is of the Liberal wets faction (the socially liberal faction). He wants to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, say sorry to the Aboriginals, and wants to discard Howard’s baby: Workchoices. He is not favoured by Howard’s conservative faction.
Nelson is the maverick former Cabinet Minister of the Howard govt. He did well as Education Minister but blundered badly as Defence Minister. He was also a former Labor member. However, he is considered a lightweight and is prone to gaffes. He differs from Turnbull in that he wants to keep Workchoices as a Liberal policy.
Abbott is known as the ‘mad monk’ of Howard. He’s the attack dog for Howard and the poster boy for the Liberal religious conservatives. His conservative views are anything and everything that the Vatican Catholic Church says. Anti-abortion, anti-gays, anti-drugs. He wants to continue with Howard’s policies and describes himself as Howard’s greatest fan.
After the leadership ballot, Abbott was the first to lose. He then transferred his supporters to support Nelson against Turnbull, which resulted in Nelson winning by 45-42 votes.
Brendan Nelson is now the new Opposition Leader, but is viewed by many as only being a ’stop-gap’ leader while the Liberals regroup. Turbull and Abbott is expected to mount a challenged on his leadership as soon as he stumbles on something. Oh, glorious internal Liberal strife! I see Labor is guaranteed another 3 years after 2010 
Keep up the good work Liberals!
Also, I’m happy that the Liberals are about to turn towards true liberalism again and away from xenophobic neo-conservatism as espoused by Howard.
P.S: It has been confirmed that Howard has lost his Asian-heavy seat of Bennelong to Labor’s giant slayer Maxine McKew. Yay!!! Lol, Howard went from being a Liberal invincible legend to being remembered as a selfish pariah leader now.
