Red Tory v.2.0
Red, are you open to this being a tad wordy to simply say: the Libs are devolving (have devolved?) into a 416 rump party with sprinklings of 905? Endgame? Check and checkmate?
Re 416/905: I like the way the Vancouver Sun put it -- Harper continues to treat Ontario like a low-hanging pinata. Harper seems to have his faithful 25-30% of Ontario voters no matter what and seems satisfied with that.
dh, and I would suggest the Cons can only build on that 25-30%. In another lifetime when I was employed by an Asian raider, he once told me: "If you can't control a company holding 30% of the shares, then you shouldn't be in the game."
As you might guess and at my own peril I gotta disagree with you Red. This waiting around for the right time to call an election is frustrating, damaging to the Liberal brand and weak. Any minority Govt in my opinion should bring down the government on the first and on every opportunity to do so. If your opponent wins another minority you have another election until you win. If they win a majority(I dont believe Harper will ever have the numbers) you stop them with the senate and the courts. Keep in mind Harper has no money left to buy anymore Quebec votes and I believe there are members of whats left of the liberal media waiting for the next election to bury Harper. If we have to change leaders because of an election loss so be it. Maybe Justin Trudeau will finally step up and save the day. Dion can go back to writing policy and Ignatieff can go work at the Fraser Institute where he belongs.I guess it depends on your perspective.From where you sit the consevatives have governed to the middle. From my perspective over on the hard left every step Harper takes and every tiny victory he wins has never ending slippery slope consequences. Everyday Harper sits in office is another day Canada's reputation is damaged beyond repair, another judge or bureaucrat is appointed by Harper and his war chest gets bigger. Hell Imagine if a supreme court justice retires. In short waiting for the election weakens our ability to stop Harper should he get his dreaded majority. The time is now and tomorrow and every chance we get.
"Any minority Govt in my opinion should bring down the government on the first and on every opportunity to do so." Should read,Any majority opposition should bring down the govt on the first and on every opportunity to do so. oops
Sebastian — I think it would be fairer to say that they’re devolving into a party almost exclusively representing the urban enclaves of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver with something of a fighting chance in the surrounding suburbs, but little to none (with a few notable exceptions) in rural Canada.
Militantliberal — Those are valid enough points, however they’re predicated on the confident belief that Harper will never have a sufficient plurality to form a majority government. Of this, I’m not so sure. He’s an experienced national campaigner (more than can be said for Dion), has a well-funded machine, lots of money for advertising, a slick, fully-staffed warroom, all the pluses of being in government, etc., etc… It will be a difficult, uphill struggle for the Liberals just to stay viable, let alone hold the Conservatives to a minority. If you don’t like the thought of Harper being in office one day longer than he has to be because of the creeping, incremental damage he’s inflicting on Canada (in your estimation), then it’s hard to see how you could be willing to run the risk of helping put him in an unassailable majority position for the next four years. Surely it’s better to get the by-elections behind (in which the Libs stand to do very well), build a little momentum from that, keep tapping away at the government, spend the summer building up the grassroots and raising money… preparing for an election. Then pull the plug after the next budget in the autumn, if not even sooner. That’s the way I see it.
Red, I believe you're familiar enough with my "Weltanshaung" to know that where political power resides re the old metropole/hinterland dynamic is about to be flopped on its head, in no uncertain terms. It's a hard rain that's gonna fall, to quote Mr. Zimmerman.
Libs and Dippers are duking it out for the Montreal/Hogtown/Van latte demographic to what end? Those luxories, luxories of thought inclusive, are about to evaporate. So what political resources can a party pull out of a vacuum?
Why people have such a difficult time perceiving the end of an era is beyond me. The hurt will be extreme. It welcomes conservative values, for lack of a better term, as those are the values of merit, integrity, toughing it out, no free rides, etc. To go on cloaking the decency of such a social fabric with the marginal illusions of the Bible-thumpers does a dis-service to the public at-large, irrespective of political blinders.
I haven’t seen all that much of the “decency” or “conservative values” of which you speak with respect to the Harper government. On issues that I care most about such as fiscal responsibility, accountability and transparency, they’ve been a miserable failure in every respect. All hat and no cattle. The government is more expensive and bloated than ever before. Plenty of corporate welfare and “free rides” — if you’re a bank or a multinational oil company, that is.
Their jingoism and exploitation of the war in Afghanistan for political gain has been repulsive. They’ve also bungled military purchases and wasted millions in the process.
They’ve waffled hopelessly on the environment to the point where nobody knows exactly what they stand for and, worst of all, they’ve done even less than the Liberals (no mean feat, I might add) aside from introducing some piffling tax rebates and ostensibly “green” transport initiatives.
They babble on about “democracy reform” but all it seems to consist of is meddling with the Senate and trimming around the edges rather than getting to the root of the problem (for obvious reasons because it would involve constitutional reform).
They’ve dragged their feet on border security and border infrastructure (two things that would have a tremendously positive impact on our manufacturing sector, by the way) and after two long years are only now getting around to addressing these problems (the solutions still being years away…)
They’ve done little on the aboriginal file (in fact, have gone backwards), practically nothing on healthcare (aside from throw three-quarters of a billion in unaccountable funds at the “wait-times” issue, only addressing a narrow sliver of the problem).
And so on.
As for the “end of an era”… well, perhaps. I guess we’ll see whether that bears out in the next election. The vote-splitting on the “Left” (such as it is) over the same turf can only serve the Conservatives and do harm to both the NDP and Liberals. There’s a local riding here that’s a perfect case in point of that dynamic. It’s completely retarded.
There's only vote splitting on the left, because the Liberals decided to tack that way.
He could have tacked right, or even stayed centrist, but Dion's literally fighting on NDP turf.
Martin's impending supermajority (just before adscam)was the result of a fiscally conservative/slightly socially progressive movement. Heck, I recall at the time many conservatives saying they were going to vote for Martin, though having a still fractured right helped.
In addition to Dion's many tactical blunders, he's made a serious strategic error in moving so far left.
Blue liberals either won't be voting in the next go around, or they'll be increasingly more comfortable in voting for the no-longer-scary Harper.
Well, that's one theory. I haven't seen a lot of evidence of this leftward shift. But that's the Conservative party line and I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot of it parroted by dutiful little foot soldiers like yourself.
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