There is one reason and one reason only that Canada is currently going through an election campaign; power lust by The Liberal Party. It was obvious from the outset that the Liberals had absolutely no chance of winning as many seats as the leading Conservatives. So what was their motive?
As the campaign has progressed and Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff has remained incapable of maintaining the deception, it has become clear that the Liberals planned to form a government with the support of the Bloc Quebecois and the NDP. After a disastrous, equivocating performance on Day One of the campaign, Ignatieff was clearly playing word games by denying plans for a "coalition." While he may not have planned to award Cabinet positions to the NDP and Bloc, he evidently planned a deal and political deals always come at a price. The price would be paid by Canadian taxpayers, but what did that matter to a Liberal party thirsting for a return to power in the drought years since they last won an election under Jean Chretien?
The Liberal plan has backfired catastrophically. Liberal strategists strikingly underestimated Mr. Ignatieff's profound ineptitude as a political campaigner. His efforts at populism are comically awkward and his personal appeal is minimal. In fact, Mr. Ignatieff's campaign is so deficient that the unthinkable is on the verge of happening - the Liberals may not even be able to hold on to their position as Official Opposition, which if poll trends bear out, would fall to the NDP.
It's probable that Canadian voters will do a reality check and not cast their ballot for one of Jack Layton's candidates on May 2 in anything approaching the numbers that current polls suggest. But what would happen if Jack Layton's NDP did become the party with the second-most seats in Parliament?
It could mean Jack Layton as Prime Minister of Canada. The Liberals might well support a coalition with Layton at the head, anticipating it would implode under the NDP's incompetence and that they would be able to exploit that in another election soon to follow. The Liberals would likely envision better success from that model than they had with the Harper minority government, which stymied them at every turn.
An NDP-led minority government would likely collapse quickly under the weight of its own incompetence, giving the Liberals another crack at power under whichever leader they choose to replace Ignatieff, which they will invariably do soon after their upcoming election debacle. So a minority government means that Canadians will have yet another election within the next two years, if not much sooner.
An NDP minority government would also mean that the Deputy Leader of the governing party is someone who had put forward 9-11 conspiracy theories in Parliament. Libby Davies accused Canada's most important trading and economic partner, upon who our economy is largely dependent, of being complicit in the murder of thousands of its own citizens on September 11, 2001.
What that would do to Canada's international credibility and its reputation abroad can only be speculated upon. We would certainly have new friends in Tehran to make up for all the lost support in the US Congress, but don't look at that to help our economy much.
The reality is that the NDP caucus is made up largely of boobs. In fact, their legendary incompetence was solidified by The Clampetts, Bob Rae's Ontario cabinet during the NDP's only term as the governing party in Ontario. Bob Rae is an able politician, but the NDP ranks are so deficient, he couldn't even fill a cabinet table with capable people. It was that experience which largely drove Rae to the Liberal Party.
Jack Layton's idea on how to solve problems is to raise taxes and increase government spending. Every leftist special interest group will think they won the lottery. Anyone familiar with the way government spends money can tell you that the result of that will be a worsened economy with few positive results, unless you happen to be an employee of a left-wing NGO.
The one group of people who stand to benefit most if there's a strong NDP showing on May 2 and the Conservatives don't get a majority are financial speculators. The Canadian dollar is at a 20 year high reflecting international confidence in the Conservative government's handling of our economy. Currency speculators stand to make a fortune if they short the Canadian dollar, the value of which would tumble along with that interational confidence if Jack Layton were to be the person who leads the next government.
Ignatieff conveys desperation more than inspiration:
The Blazing Cat Fur parody:
The NDP's cap-and-trade system has me wondering if that will light the fire for Western separation.
ReplyDelete"The reality is that the NDP caucus is made up largely of boobs. In fact, their legendary incompetence was solidified by The Clampetts, Bob Rae's Ontario cabinet during the NDP's only term as the governing party in Ontario. Bob Rae is an able politician, but the NDP ranks are so deficient, he couldn't even fill a cabinet table with capable people. It was that experience which largely drove Rae to the Liberal Party."
ReplyDeleteYou could say exactly the same thing about the NDP government in B.C. and exactly the same thing about why Ujjal Dosanjh moved over to the federal Liberals.