GIVING THE LEFT WEDGIES

Divisive excuses leave Left floundering (Janet Albrechtson, The Australian, November 10th, 2004)

The verb "to wedge" and its adjectival cousin "divisive" are the words du jour. Appearing in most newspapers almost every week, this new semantic fashion has two basic rules of thumb.

Rule No.1: with few exceptions, only conservatives can wedge or be divisive. John Howard is often playing wedge politics or the politics of division or raising wedge issues or pushing divisive policies. Ditto for the US President. Newspapers during the past week have offered rich pickings on the divisive George W. Bush engaging in wedge politics.

Which brings us to the second rule on what makes a wedge. Issues that the Left is most uncomfortable about are invariably wedge issues. The Left deems the very act of raising these issues illegitimate by claiming the discussion is an exercise in divisive, wedge politics. Combine the two rules and the story behind the wedge word is simple: conservative politicians engage in wedge politics when they challenge those issues that the Left most prizes.

In The Weekend Australian Financial Review, Tony Walker said the US was at war with itself and Bush "has played no small role in fostering divisions for political advantage, such as his championing of a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage and other wedge issues, notably his decision to limit federal funding for stem-cell research".

Over the page Geoffrey Barker noted the skills of Howard and Bush as "wedge politicians".

On Saturday a Sydney Morning Herald headline roared: "How the wedge was won." Back a few pages, columnist Mike Carlton said the US was entering "a new dark age of conservatism" because the electorate had voted in favour of "family values and religious faith, all that stuff".

Of course, "all that stuff" saw Bush win 51 per cent of the vote, 3.5 million more votes that Democrat John Kerry and the largest number of votes any presidential candidate has won. It was all apparently achieved by wedge politics, by raising issues the sophisticates have deemed too delicate or downright inappropriate for debate. The fatuous use of the wedge word is illustrated rather neatly on the issue of gay marriage, where Bush is roundly condemned as the wedge politician. If you are an activist judge in Massachusetts or the mayor of San Francisco pushing a gay agenda by recognising gay marriage before the rest of the community has given its imprimatur, that's not wedge politics.

But if you are a conservative politician such as Bush who reacts to that push by suggesting that marriage should remain a relationship between one man and one woman, that's classic wedge politics. Commentators said it all pointed to the US lurching to the Right. It sounds more like maintaining the status quo than lurching anywhere. And never mind that Bush has said he supports civil unions for gay relationships.

And, of course, who could forget our own 2001 wedge election on border protection? Howard was the wedge politician who dared suggest that "we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come". The Left was affronted by this raw assertion of national sovereignty. It clashes with its vision of global democracy where voting is a thing of the past and, instead, like-minded leftists on the international stage get to set the political agenda on everything from immigration to abortion. On these untouchable issues, it seems that even discussing these issues is to play wedge politics.