Tuesday, April 26, 2011

I Love It...

...when a well known columnist writes a piece in one of Canada's dailies that says more or less the same thing I said the day before:

John Ivison: Cats have nine lives, the Liberal party may not
"It seems incredible to even suggest that the most successful political party in the Western world – an electoral machine which held power for nearly 70 years in the 20th century – could be in terminal decline. Yet the same fate has befallen equally successful parties in other countries. The British Liberal Party was also the natural governing party in the second half of the 19th century and first two decades of the 20th. Yet after the First World War, radical voters shifted to Labour, leaving the Liberal Party as a rump that has never reclaimed its former glory – the decline and fall of which was chronicled in George Dangerfield’s famous book The Strange Death of Liberal England."
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"...if Stephen Harper wins a majority, he has pledged to cut the per vote subsidy all parties currently get from the taxpayer. This has the potential to bankrupt the Liberals and the Bloc, but not necessarily the NDP, which has a relatively robust fund-raising capacity."
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"...the mould that has shaped Canadian politics for the past seven years has been broken and we now have a completely new dynamic on the left. In less than a week, we’ll see whether the Liberal Party’s decline is terminal or whether this is just one of its periodic swoons."
Hope it is terminal. I volunteer to drive one of the hearse's. I'd even dig a grave or two.

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2 Comments:

Blogger Dave in Pa. said...

The same fate as the once-mighty British Liberal Party's befell America's once-mighty Federalists and the Whig Party. "Sic transit gloria electus".

April 27, 2011 7:31 pm  
Blogger Louise said...

Assuming the Dippers do form the official opposition, and assuming they would find no reason to let the Liberals create their coalition (God forbid that should happen), I have to wonder if Canadians are forming the battle lines that, when done, will see the end of unions.

Without the unions, the NDP wouldn't exist and for years and years and years, unions have stalemated. Yet they have waaaaay more power than their numbers would dictate, especially considering that membership is compulsory in unionized workplaces, which I consider to be a violation of the freedom of association guaranteed in our charter. I don't know if that has ever been challenged in the courts.

Considering what's happening south of the border, perhaps Canada is fixing to fight that battle, too.

Gonna be an interesting decade.

April 27, 2011 8:11 pm  

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