Cory Bernardi is no Donald Trump. Say what you will about Hair Gropenführer, he at least had an economic message.
It was batshit insane, but it was nonetheless a coherent message on its own terms.
Free trade exports jobs and Mexicans steal everything that isn't nailed down. Unless they rape it.
Insane, but internally consistent and well pitched to a growing lumpenproletariat.
I might be wrong, but the newly independent Senator Bernardi seems to lose interest in most issues the further they get from the bedroom.
It's why, for now at least, he hasn't been joined in self-imposed exit by soul mates such as north Queensland's George Christensen, who warned President Trumble yesterday that "the government's position will become 'untenable' unless it embraces conservative causes."
Like what? Demonising refugees? Supporting the fossil fuel industry over renewables? Scamming and terrorising pensioners and other welfare recipients to fund massive tax breaks for multinational corporations? Weaponising homophobia as a vote harvester by indulging the worst instincts of the punishers and straighteners in the coalition's barking mad Christian rump? Channelling billions of dollars to private schools over state institutions? Gutting the CSIRO's climate science capabilities? Indulging the unhinged bigotries of anti-halal movement?
Oh, wait…
Seriously though, George, do feel free to slide into the comment thread below and let us all know how your administration (and it is yours, not Trumble's) has failed the conservative test?
As for Bernardi, he's going to need to tell a story that extends a few chapters beyond poofter-bashing and just another Muslim scare.
It's almost inexplicable that having enjoyed a couple of months' sabbatical in the US to watch up close as Trump demolished the Republican establishment and then the Democrats, that Cory Bernardi has learned exactly nothing about why Trump was able to do that – notwithstanding an embarrassing loss of nearly 3 million in the popular vote and a heavy-handed reach-around from his KGB controller Comrade Putin.
Trump didn't win the White House on the votes of millions of bigots.
Sure, he was the first choice of bigots and racists and the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, but tens of millions of quite normal people still voted for him for the same reason they voted for Bill Clinton. For the same reason they vote one way or another in our elections.
It's the economy, stupid.
People vote their interests and as much as crazy cross-burning fun as it can be to argue that their primary interest is in persecuting brown people or "the gays", in the end you still have to convince them that they somehow benefit economically from all the hateful douchewaffle.
Even One Nation understands that.
I'm not sure Cory Bernardi does.