Good Advise For the Liberals
Liberal remedy to Layton is to look in the mirror
I'm looking forward to the new Conservative generation. I'm especially going to enjoy the death throe theatrics that will be on display at Liblogs.
"Since his (Jean Chretien's) departure, and Paul Martin’s defeat, Liberal strategy has consisted of two streams: painting Stephen Harper as a stooge of the U.S. corporate-military complex, and reminding Canadians that the Liberals introduced universal health care.[---]
Is it really a shock that the recipe has failed to excite people?"
"Now Layton appears to have passed them on the left, and taken the NDP into second spot. What to do?[---]
Answer: Quit reacting. Find a reason for the Liberals to exist.
In 21 elections between 1921 and 1993, when the Liberals won it was because of Quebec. They took the overwhelming majority of Quebec seats in every winning campaign, and only once were they popular enough in the rest of the country to have won without Quebec (and even then, in 1935, it would have been iffy). The Liberal party was about keeping Quebec happy; that’s where power lay.
It all changed when the Bloc Quebecois came along and stole their meal ticket. Since 1993, when the Liberals win it’s because of Ontario, yet the party has never put the effort into pleasing Ontario that it did into Quebec."
"The party is all but dead from Manitoba to B.C. There is little sign Quebec is likely to come around again, having decided that, if it has to pick a federalist, Mr. Layton most closely aligns with Quebec political thinking. Liberals are still a moderate force in the Maritimes, but there aren’t enough seats there to make a big difference.[---]
It’s time for the Liberals to accept that the world has changed. It’s not 1980, and yearning for the past is no route to success in the future. The party isn’t going anywhere until it figures out how to win more seats in Ontario, and it’s not going to do that until it stops looking at the province and seeing only a clutch of seats in and around Toronto. Toronto may be the most liberal city in the country, but once past its borders you enter a province with a pronounced conservative strain, and Liberals have done very little to appeal to it. Most of Toronto will vote Liberal whatever the case; building the party’s entire platform to satisfy activists in safe downtown ridings is a waste of resources and evidence of atrophy at the top."
"When you’re dead in the West, on life-support in Quebec and slipping in Ontario, it’s hard to pose as a national party. They need to rebuild from the ground up, and Canada’s most populous and vote-rich province is the place to start."Yup. And Iggy ain't the man to do it either. And by that time......
I'm looking forward to the new Conservative generation. I'm especially going to enjoy the death throe theatrics that will be on display at Liblogs.
Labels: Canadian politics, elections, Iggy, Liberal Party
posted by Louise at 9:00 pm
5 Comments:
So, two outcomes seem to be intertwined: Canada sans Quebec and Canada sans a powerful Liberal Party and Liberal govts.
I dont' want to jinx it by predicting, but it appears
(at least from the most scientific-appearing poll, "Vitruvius's Experimental Election Predictor") the Conservatives may finally get their majority, albeit a small one. Something along the lines of five to a dozen seats or so.
What's your prediction, Louise?
This is very hard to predict. A feeling in my bones will have to do.
I think we are about to embark on a new era. That era will be characterized by conservatism, the brand without the kind of social conservatism that reaches into the bedroom, if you know what I mean.
Most conservatives couldn't care less about things that are a private matter within families or between two people, other than that the government should not interfere, but we do care about being responsible and being allowed to feel and deal with the full consequences of not being responsible.
If the Liberals wander around in the wilderness for forty years, which they might have to do, we might actually see Canada break up into its more natural constituencies that are more determined by geography than language and history, but language and history are still important. Quebec may, in fact, become it's own country, but only once it becomes ready to shoulder adult responsibilities (the libs and bloc types have kept them from growing up). The West would do quite well as an independent country. We've got oil and BC has the Asian/Pacific markets to cater to, so there's good reason for the oil provinces and BC to scratch each other's backs.
However, if the result is status quo, then you might see a lot of Canadians jumping off of tall buildings and bridges. This is a good spring for the later, since most of the rivers in Western Canada are flooding right now. Funny thing, though. I haven't seen any party leader tossing sandbags this time. Could be an omen of some sort.
Oh, and the Maritimes will do fine, especially if they amalgamate, 'cause they got oil, too. Ontario will have to learn to quit enabling Quebec, but I don't think it will take them long. There seems to be a major shift to the right in their politics, if Toronto's last mayoralty race is an indication.
That was probably more than what you were expecting, but other than that, I have no idea. The only thing I know for sure is the sun will rise as predicted on May 3rd. I'm looking at the long haul, and in the interim, if your country goes down the tubes, we fall in right on top of ya.
So what's with all the uncharacteristic pessimism about the future down your way?
Does what happens in Canada affect you folks in any appreciable way?
There is also a growing, but as yet, nascent federalist movement in Quebec, but that's just business as usual. We always seem to be out of step, each dancing to a different rhythm.
"So what's with all the uncharacteristic pessimism about the future down your way?
Does what happens in Canada affect you folks in any appreciable way?"
What happens in Canada does have an influence on America, more than most Canadians realize, I think. Even more so, what happens in Canada reflects what happens politically and socially in America. It seems to me that in both our countries, our respective financial and political "elites" have betrayed our nations, weakening both nations, crucially aided and abetted in this by the treacherous "progressive" MSMs of both countries.
I'm trying very hard to find the proverbial silver lining in these very dark clouds but I can't see any at the moment. I just have to pray and tell myself that America has survived great depressions, the Civil War, World Wars.
At age 29, the young, self-taught Abraham Lincoln made a short but powerful speech in Illinois (tinyurl.com/qgbpd5) known as his Lyceum Address. What a genius, that man! Here's an excerpt from that marvelous speech, talking about the gift to each generation of America's health, vitality and freedom and each generation's duty to pass it all on, unimpaired.
"...This task of gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to posterity, and love for our species in general, all imperatively require us faithfully to perform.
How then shall we perform it?--At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?-- Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!--All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."
Wow! Rot from within. That's pretty much how I see things unfolding, thanks largely to the infiltration of political correctness in our universities, where gullible students are taught that there is nothing in the rise of Western Civilization to admire or defend and to do so is to commit the grievous sin of ethnocentrism, or worse, bigotry. Of course, ethnocentrism is universal, but only in the West is it considered bigotry.
Bullshit, I say!!
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