Here's the best case scenario: Rudd wins, calls an early election to legitimise his position, and gets turfed out by the Australian people along with the whole pack of his cronies. Labor then goes away and works out why its daft ideology and union-dominated administration invariably turns its good intentions into hapless catastrophe.

Listen to what his OWN colleagues are saying. Rudd is a disturbed man. He has serious personal defects which we wouldn't put up with in any co-worker let alone someone who wants to run the country. The author fails to realise that these aren't the exaggerations of his enemies but consistent and factual accounts from the Rudd Files.

If Abbott had been caught at a strip joint paid for by the public purse, overheard abusing cab drivers or swearing at young flight attendants for not finding his special meal he would have been portrayed as a right wing neo-nazi bully boy with a hatred of women.

Rudd has been able to escape any scrutiny for his bizarre behaviour because people have fallen for his boyish happy-little-vegemite glow and his glib superficial explanations of his aggressive outbursts.

Gillard may be devious and incompetent, but Rudd is in a class of his own.

Gillard, absolutely.

That’s not an endorsement for her as a good PM, it is simply a preference between her and Rudd.

Crikey people, Rudd was exterminated as PM for a very good reason. Labor’s ‘faceless men’ wouldn’t have taken the extraordinary step of toppling the PM without a very good reason.

The last thing this country needs is Rudd mark 2.

There are 103 people in the Labor caucus. If Rud gets the support of, say, thirty of those members, he may lose but he and his supporters will act like wrecking balls during the short time left until the election. Only one or two of them has to skip a vote in parliament and the government is gone.

How about this ? If Rudd gets anywhere near thirty votes on Monday, then they BOTH resign and retire to the back bench for the duration of the government with their mouths wired shut, while a third candidate is chosen as Prime Minister, someone who has the genius and skills to quickly negotiate a deal with the Greens, Wilkie, and/or the three independents - and then to work as an effective prime minister.

That candidate would also have to be someone who was a bit friendly with both Rudd and Gillard, at least to the point where neither one would do the dirty on him/her while he/she tried to steer what's left of the government coalition to the next election.

Yes, you're probably right: so many ifs.

So a Steven Bradbury election for Abbott by the end of April ?

Joe

I liked the political comment:

"Kevin Rudd says he can win the voters, she can’t. Julia Gillard says she runs a functional government, and his was shambolic. Both are right. Caucus members face an invidious choice. Whatever they do — and at this point they are expected to re-elect Gillard — it will be a disaster. In less than five years, thanks mainly to two leaders who have been bad in very different ways, this Labor government has become almost as discredited as the Whitlam one all those years ago."

My preference as a Liberal is to keep Juliar as PM, as with her leading Labor, Abbott does not even need to campaign.

Read James Button's article in todays Canberra Times Forum section. Rudd's reputation is well known.

The strategy is transparent - thanking supporters repeatedley and pleading with supporters to approach their MPs. Other than in QLD perhaps, talking about all the support and thanking people as though it is taken as a fait a compli does not make it so. It is pyschological mumbo jumbo - say it often enough and people will start to believe it.

Think people. Atman, Yabby and Chris Lewis echo the sentiments.

Gillard has had a difficult job for many reasons not least including a hung parliament, some faux pas about real Julias and inability to let the public see her 'close-up', and add to that internal bickering and eroding of confidence from the sidelines.

Can one be optimistic that the public is going to show some sense and not fall for the 'new' Kevin?