The greater the decline in the support ratings for the leadership of the DPJ duarchy of Hatoyama Yukio and Ozawa Ichiro, the more fragile becomes the unity of the LDP.That the unpopularity of the leaders of the ruling party ends up destabilizing the main opposition party is decidedly peculiar. One could almost believe a conspiracy was somehow subverting the natural order -- that Yosano Kaoru, Ozawa's counterpart in an ongoing friendly rivalry over who is the best Go player in the Diet, was conspiring with his board game buddy in a end-around play extracting from the LDP its heretofore most reliable pillars of support: fiscal conservatives and historical revisionists.
However, one need not appeal to a conspiracy to make sense of these seemingly contradictory results. The fissioning of even a rump LDP is entirely congruent with the Rule.
