Lee - nasty and stupid

[UPDATE-- 5:30PM: Forced to issue an apology this afternoon.--UPDATE ENDS]

Posted yesterday about Melissa Lee's greatest threat to her campaign to take Mt Albert being the public impression that she is nasty (rather than unethical and unprofessional, as was the standard Labour line). Today it is NASTY. Nasty and stupid.

Lee implodes over at the Standard (see one of their Tory commenters below).

Not PC:

Either National's Steven Joyce hadn't bothered to brief his party's by-election candidate about the motorway that's about to bisect her would-be electorate, or (being both a pretty girl and a former journalist) Melissa Lee simply hadn't bothered to find out the facts and thought a nice smile would be enough instead. Either way, it was apparent even to people in the room holding up National Party signs that when Melissa Lee says "I don't know" or "I can't remember" that on this much at least she's probably telling the truth.

I don't say that like it's a good thing. Clearly, details are not Ms Lee's thing. (And if she really was "there to listen," then why the hell was it so hard getting her to shut up when other people were talking?)
[...]
Asked to explain how the new motorway would most help the good people of Mt Albert, she explained that it would stop the bad people of South Auckland driving to Mt Albert to burgle people's homes. Asked to clarify by a questioner, she repeated the claim. Showing she's truly not one to stop digging when she creates a big hole for herself -- a hole as big as the number of open mouths in the room -- she insisted that the local police commander had told her this very morning that the biggest issue with which he has to deal is the number of South Aucklanders driving to Mt Albert to burgle people's homes.
[...]
It was as incongruous and frankly ludicrous as Jenny Shipley's comment in Parliament several years ago (apropos of nothing relevant) that Polynesians tend "to climb in the windows of other New Zealanders at night." And it deserves to be treated with equal contempt.

UPDATE: Let me clarify something here. Steven Joyce and several commentators around the traps have suggested Melissa's South Auckland comment was made "in the heat of the meeting," "in the face of a hostile audience" and so forth.

That's not the case, and those commentators weren't at the meeting, which was hardly "hostile" in any sense. More bemused. Posting at Hard News, commenter Stephen Horsley is spot on:

- I was at the meeting, and I would have to disagree [that this was a rushed response to a hostile audience]. It wasn't something that she just blurted out, in fact she seemed very pleased with herself for having thought of it. When asked to clarify the comment, she went into a fair amount of detail justifying herself. . . it appeared to be a view that she genuinely subscribed too.

That's exactly as I saw it too.

Here's another one:
That was the gasping in horror, I take it, that non-reaction.
If what she says - by all accounts - doesn't make any sense (even to their own supporters) then what she said was stupid. Say what you like about the electoral chances of Ravi Musuku, but he wouldn't have been nasty or stupid.

The big issue facing the electorate is obviously not law and order - that is discharged after last stabbing or bashing victim is discharged from hospital - but the motorway will be there forever. The Nats are driving the wrong way down the highway, with the wrong candidate at the wheel. The Nat supporters are more fixated on campaigning for the Green candidate than saving her. Lee is the one at risk of having her vote collapse for a stronger opposition candidate to Shearer. She's going to have to go on a charm offensive, or perhaps a rohypnol offensive, to win over the electorate at this point to remain the unassailable No.2 contender.