The Age's Paul Austin thinks of Ted Baillieu, he sees George W Bush. At the Spencer Street Soviet, this is not the highest praise going, as you might imagine, so it was a curious analogy.
Of course in the very long run, history will record President Bush as a good president who had the courage to act to crush terrorism and the resolve not to back off in spite of enormous risk to his country and himself. I'd concede that's a minority view at the moment, mainly because rebuilding Iraq has been so difficult.
History tells us that the way of the appeaser is inevitable catastrophe. Stand up to the bully and you might cop a punch in the nose but at least you'll live safer and with more honour. Act the coward and your victimhood is guaranteed.
In Red Ted, he did not confront an existential threat as America does and did. It was merely a blog designed to annoy him. Simple as that.
He was told by an ally at 104 Exhibition Street that two staff there were responsible for a blog that denigrated him. He was happy with the decision to sack them. He was silent - as were others - for a month.
The OC became aware of the story and for reasons hard to fathom, the culprits were named, shamed, vilified and described as part of a vast right-wing conspiracy against Ted.
Make no mistake, Ted's reaction was quite calculated. It wasn't driven by the anger of the moment. He had a month to contemplate what he might do. His mission was not to avenge the blog but to secure factional advantage for himself and his Baillieu-David Davis group.
As one of his supporters told the OC and we reported at the time "This is a once in a lifetime opportunity." And true enough it might have looked that way to them at that moment.
But Baillieu is driven by his demons. He doesn't control the party he leads. The party he leads thinks he's unelectable. They think he stands for ideas from a pre-John Howard age. They think he repeatedly misuses his role as Leader to attempt to support his factional mates.
And that's why he's unfit for the role. And why Terry Mulder will lead the Victorian Liberals in 2010.
Game on.
since failed candidate 
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