For the past few months some lefty Australian bloggers have been running this graphic on their sites, summing up the hopes of all anti-Liberal voters:

Kevin Rudd’s “me-too” politics have been causing us to roll our eyes for some time but you know it’s reached serious levels when you wake up to this headline splashed across the front of The Age: ‘ME-TOO POLICY MESS’. All because a shadow minister had the audacity to — wait for it — restate official ALP policy. Rudd, getting a sniff of differential between his Party and the government, jumped into damage control mode, slapping down the offending shadow minister, and hitting the airwaves to reassure voters that ‘Labor’ was still spelled L-I-B-E-R-A-L.

Facing criticism from survivors and families of Bali bombing victims, Mr Rudd tried to control the damage by portraying his stance — as on a host of other contentious issues — as being in line with that of the Howard Government.

“On the wider question of the death penalty, the Liberal Party’s policy, like Labor’s policy, is identical, and that is our global opposition to the death penalty.”

As a clearly unimpressed Michelle Gratten said, “The Labor leader’s plan was politically savvy, but leaves a sour moral taste.”