By Andrew Bolt ~
The media agrees. Malcolm Turnbull is being “pragmatic” with his Budget. That’s their kind of way of of saying he’s got no ideas and no fight and has given in to Labor.
Check the log list of journalists now hailing his defeat as “pragmatism”.
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull
Turnbull has reinvented his government as a pragmatic, populist, public investment vehicle and Bill Shorten in reply has taken Labor even further to the populist, ideological left…
The story behind this week is that Labor and the progressives have won the battle of ideas and politics since the 2013 election… A far more pragmatic Turnbull now embraces the 2013 Gillard agenda…
Pragmatism [is] at the heart of the Budget.
(T)he real Malcolm … the centrist [sic] and pragmatic Malcolm.
The Age has long urged Mr Turnbull to abandon Mr Abbott’s dogmatic stance and to adopt pragmatism and evidence-based policy. We welcome that he has done so to a large extent.
Bill Shorten’s budget reply … shows he is every bit as pragmatic as Malcolm Turnbull.
The 2017-18 federal budget delivered this week was politically pragmatic … (T)he Budget is politically pragmatic, rather than ideological … Turnbull … just loves being PM, and he would like to stay there … So, why not chance his arm on such pragmatism, especially if it gives him some, even short-term, poll relief?
Turnbull … has always been one to stress pragmatism and practicality over ideology.
[Turnbull’s] best hope from this budget in a perceptions sense is that it will drown out the long conversation about how he is captured by his conservative colleagues.
“The only thing Malcolm is captured by is pragmatism,” observes one of his close colleagues.”
Note that it’s almost entirely commentators of the Left praising Turnbull’s surrender to the Left as “pragmatism” – and probably healthy. Several also dismiss as “ideological” the advancement of Liberal values rather than Labor’s.
Reader Peter of Bellevue Hill has a theory:
The source of the gallery’s preparedness to keep the words ‘Turnbull’ and ‘progressive’ out of the same sentence might well have been Turnbull’s address to the National Press Club at the start of the year, where he hid his progressivism behind the word ‘pragmatic’:
Turnbull … described his approach to issues as objective, pragmatic and practical – “stripped of ideology”.
As if his embrace of global warming catastrophism is not ideological.
Andrew Bolt writes for the Herald Sun, Daily Telegraph, and The Advertiser and runs Australia’s most-read political blog. On week nights he hosts The Bolt Report on Sky News at 7pm and his Macquarie Radio show at 8pm with Steve Price.
Read more excellent articles from Andrew Bolt’s Blog . http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/
PA Pundits International 
Brittius
Sun 05/14/2017
Reblogged this on Brittius.
LikeLike