Is the Liberal Party a lost cause? It certainly seems that way. Every time the party has a chance to differentiate itself from its opponents, its members instead choose to imitate them. Every time the Party needs a strong leader, it chooses a weak one. And every time the party suffers a major loss, it refuses to learn.

And so, I regret to inform you that the Liberal Party has shot itself in the foot, again…

Earlier this year, New South Wales Premier and Liberal Party leader Dominic Perrottet said that, in the interest of including the membership of the party, each seat would be opened up for preselection, with members finally getting some say regarding their nominated candidates. At the time, it sounded promising. It seemed that the Liberal Party was finally going to somewhat democratise, and that those in the party who were there as a result of the influence of certain powerbrokers would not be so safe anymore (here’s looking at you, Matt Kean).

Even more exciting was the news that Health Minister Brad Hazzard and former Police Minister turned Transport Minister David Elliot would be stepping down from politics and leaving NSW Parliament, signalling an end to MPs who behaved particularly poorly during the pandemic.

But it was only a matter of time before the Liberal Party regressed into its old ways.

Cue the seat of Castle Hill.

Earlier in November, lawyer and former NSW Young Liberals President Noel McCoy nominated to become the NSW Liberal Party’s candidate for the seat of Castle Hill in Sydney’s Hills District. This came after David Elliott had conceded he did not possess the numbers in the branch to win preselection after his own electorate was abolished in an electoral restructure.

McCoy was expected to win the preselection.

However, last week the NSW Liberals blocked his nomination.

Why? Because he expressed views opposing lockdowns and vaccine mandates.

That’s right, the NSW Liberal Party are once again shooting themselves in the foot to protect their precious Covid policy that was, all in all, an abject failure that has wreaked havoc and harm upon the people of NSW.

These kinds of ideological moves will cost the NSW Liberal Party big time. For as long as they act like petulant partisan toddlers, desperate to protect their unpopular actions during the pandemic, they will not win an election. They are travelling a path already traversed by their colleagues in Queensland, Victoria, South Australia, and Western Australia.

Instead of watching and learning from elections that have resulted in wipeouts of the Liberal Party in such states, (particularly Western Australia where it was reduced to a measly two members of Parliament), they are choosing to reject any valuable lessons and continue down a path of self-destruction.

Instead of focusing on Conservative values, they are attempting to pander to the Left, a side of the political spectrum that will never vote for them.

Rather than continue to support the use of coal and oil, which have been reliable sources of energy for decades, they are attempting to push renewables, which will be more expensive and, coupled with the incompetence of virtue-signaling latte-sipping Leftists, will no doubt leave people in the dark, without electricity to keep them warm during the cold winter months, or, conversely, cool during Australia’s hot summers.

Rather than focus on getting back to basics in schools and updating the curriculum to reflect that, Perrottet and his band of not-so-merry men are instead planning to add Aboriginal Languages to the curriculum. Which of the 200 dialects will be taught is anyone’s guess, including NSW Education Minister Sarah Mitchell, and how schoolteachers will magically be able to speak and teach this language is a mystery also unanswered by the government. But that does not seem to matter to them. All they appear to care about is carrying out the ultimate virtue signal, no matter how badly it backfires.

And rather than allow for people who have Conservative views and values, which, quite frankly, is what they should have to effectively combat the Labor Party, represent the Liberal Party in Parliament, the Libs are rejecting these sane individuals in favour of insane ones who will blow the party to smithereens and seal its fate in the state of NSW.

The Liberal Party should know better than to continue with the line that lockdowns were necessary and vaccine mandates lawful and righteous. The way the NSW Libs handled Covid was just as bad as all the other state governments. There is seemingly no end to the number of times I have to reiterate that people lost their jobs, incomes, livelihoods, and sanity because of the nefarious behaviour our state governments engaged in. Others lost their good health, some even their lives, because of vaccine mandates that forced them into a position where they had to choose between their jobs and a jab that was most likely improperly tested, which has now led to countless recipients enduring a whole host of adverse effects, some even lifelong conditions that may never be cured.

Instead of allowing a man who could see the lockdowns and mandates for what they really were – a government out of control – and to some degree admitting the errors of their ways, the NSW Liberal Party are choosing to double down on their inane Covid policy in some absurd attempt to preserve an untenable and incoherent belief that what they did was right.

If the Liberal Party want to win re-election to power in the upcoming NSW State Election in March 2023, they need to end this moral grandstanding now and open up the party to individuals that can make the case that they made critical errors and walked a destructive authoritarian path where lines were undoubtedly crossed that will never be crossed again.

They need sensible people like Noel McCoy who can see that the Liberal Party needs a revamp, that it needs to learn the lessons of both state and federal elections of the past few years and turn away from policy that makes it practically indistinguishable from its political opposition.

They need to turn away from the ‘Matt Greens’ of the party and move towards people like Noel McCoy and Tanya Davies. They need to turn away from and quash the power of the powerbrokers and democratise the party.

And, ultimately, they need to stop trying to appease the Left, and focus on their base. This is something that Scott Morrison and the other state Liberal Parties failed to do. If Dominic Perrottet wants to keep his job, he needs to learn from their mistakes. Otherwise, the same fate that befell Scott Morrison, Zak Kirkup, Steven Marshall, Deb Frecklington, and Matthew Guy (again) awaits him.