South Losing Faith in the KMT? Again?

Haha. The pro-pan-Green Taipei Times hopefully reports:

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) heavyweights and members of the party’s Central Standing Committee have warned that the party’s southern support base has crashed through the floor and that the party could be on the verge of fragmenting.

According to a source within the KMT, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has grown even more distant from party bigwigs since the presidential election in January and has had little, if any, interaction with them.

I must be getting old, because I can recall many reports like this. From 2006:

Disappointed by the recent party split over constitutional amendments, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Vice Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) yesterday lectured KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) for his "ineffective communication" with party legislators, and urged him to handle relationships with senior party members with more delicacy.

Yep, heard this tune before, again in April of 2007:

Ma has faced continuous speculation that his relationships with former chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平), as well as People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) are problematic. His dependence on the opinions of the so-called "Ma troop," which refers to the chairman's top aides and followers, including Taipei Deputy Mayor King Pu-tsung (金溥聰), KMT Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) and Lai Shyh-bao (賴士葆), have sparked resentment among some party members.

The themes of these reports are all very similar -- KMT heavyweights bickering amongst themselves, Ma himself aloof and disconnected and not supported by other elites, the southerners who form the Taiwanese KMT just about ready to bolt... for example, from 2009:

Growing resentment for the caucus' hawkish faction -- dubbed the "Ma troop" -- has prompted some party legislators from the south of Taiwan, led by Hsu Shu-bo (許舒博), to hold their own forum on Monday.

..or this one on the legislative election from Nov of 2011. This tension between the KMT's faction politicians/legislators and its mainlander elite core, as well as between the northerners and southerners, is a structural feature of the KMT's internal politics. Ma's leadership style, widely reputed to be un-deft, simply exposes it whenever his public support plummets or when the KMT hits a rough patch, as it has with the Lin Yi-shih scandal. The South is not losing faith in the KMT, at least not due to these transient events, and this too shall blow over.... only to surface again...
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