As much as the other parties have been trying to paint Stephen Harper as a "right-winger" and the epitet "neo-con" is usually attached to him by NDP operatives, by comparative global standards, Canada's Conservative government is a centrist one.
Canada's socialized health care, lack of governmental desire to institute any laws restricting abortion access, its open immigration policies including a federal immigration minister who recently advocated to make it easier for Gay refugees to enter this country, all belie the notion of radical rightist ideology.
The danger of the current trend suggesting that the socialist NDP may actually be able to form the lead of a coalition party could ironically lead to Canada having a government further to the right of anything it has seen in years.
The lesson of Bob Rae's NDP government in Ontario shows how this could happen.
Rae was and is an able leader and politician. He was a three-term federal NDP MP and his party's Finance Critic before becoming leader of the Ontario NDP. He was far more capable, when he became Ontario's premier in 1990, than Jack Layton is today. Layton's only pre-commons political experience was as a long-serving, mediocre Toronto City Councillor and his leadership of the NDP has been distinguished by no tanglible result other than a recent polling popularity.
While Rae was more competent than Layton, he shared the same problem as the current federal NDP leader in that he was saddled with a caucus of inept ideologues who were incapable of effective governing. The result was so bad that the political pendulum swung drastically to the right and allowed the election of Mike Harris.
Harris was a conservative and a terrible leader for Ontario. His "Common Sense Revolution" was a sham. His promises to lower provincial taxes were only kept by offloading services to the municipalities, necessitating tax increases at that level. Harris' contempt of democracy was such that he forced amalgamation on municipalities that overwhelmingly rejected it in referendums.
Harris was a cynical, smart politician who knew he could keep a majority by exploiting and neglecting urban constituencies in order to keep rural ones happy. He was a poor leader for Ontario. But his poor leadership would never have come to pass had it not been for the protest vote gone wild that allowed Rae's NDP to create conditions allowing for Harris to succeed him.
Centrist Liberal voters should keep this analogy well in mind on May 2 when they go to the polls.
Layton's NDP includes incompetents and buffoons at the top of the party, including Deputy Leader Libby Davies, who is a 9-11 conspiracy theorist, as well as Joe Comartin, who is a George Galloway acolyte and associates with radical Imam Zafar Bangash, an admirer of the totalitarian Ayatollah Khomeini.
An NDP government would create economic disaster for Canada that would eventually and inevitably swing the national pendulum so far to the right that it will make Stephen Harper look like Stephane Dion.
Michael Ignatieff may be a bright academic, but as a politician he is hopeless. If centrists want to prevent a real right-wing government from coming to power in Canada, their only choice is to vote for the the centrist Conservatives that are in place now.
EYE ON A CRAZY PLANET
Layton and his Bolshevik swine will rape and pillage the country. send them to Quebec. they deserve each other.
ReplyDeleteRape and pillage would probably do less damage to our economy than what the NDP has in mind.
ReplyDeleteLiberals would have to be insane to support Harper after seeing how he's treated fiscal conservatives and libertarians since he's become leader. If anything, he's polarized his own natural supporters even more than he has the electorate at large.
ReplyDeleteYour theory is flawed in at least one important way. When Bob Rae was elected, the Ontario Liberal Party didn't cease to exist. The federal party likely will in the aftermath of Monday, for reasons that I've given at my place.
That leaves a huge gap in the center of the electorate. Both the Tories and the NDP will rush to fill it. If the Blue Liberal half of the party moves to the federal Conservatives, that will naturally draw the Tories even further to the center, making a Harris-figure federally almost impossible to imagine.
Moreover, Harris - who was already Ontario lesder by the time of the 1990 election - was more of a creation of a strange Tory civil war than he was a reaction to Rae.
Frank Miller was considerably to the right of Bill Davis, and lost power. The party then went left with Larry Grossman and lost again. That lead to Mike Harris, where the party got very, very lucky.
Rae was hated by everybody in 1995, but the election was actually Lyn McLeod's to lose. And lose it she did, blowing a 60% approval rating in no time at all. Harris was the last man standing and, in fairness, he ran a great campaign.
I think your predictions of the complete demise of the Liberal Party are premature, Skippy. They are going to take a major hit, but it won't be anything like the Kim Campbell debacle the Progressive Conservatives faced.
ReplyDeleteThe party will still end up with a number of seats on the strength of good candidiates. Most of the Toronto Liberal seats are safe and they'll hold on to a few in BC, Quebec and the Maritimes.
All this talk of Rae as an analogy is somewhat ironic because the odds are better than even it'll be him leading the Liberals into the next federal election, whenever that happens. Rae is a much better campaigner than Iggy, or Layton for that matter. I'm not sure how many Liberal party members will shift allegiance and go over to the NDP in particular.
If the NDP does as well as the polls suggest (and I'd be willing to bet their seat count doesn't improve anywhere near as much as the pollsters are guessing), I don't think anyone actually believes this is the beginning of federal NDP dynasty.
I think the analogy still does apply well and a Federal NDP government (were there to be one)will do such a horrendous job with the economy that the Tories will have a cakewalk in the election after.
The only other scenario I see happening, if diaster strikes and we get an NDP-led minority, is a replay (in an opposite sort of way) of Joe Clark, where Layton will screw up in a matter of months and the current Tories will ride it to a majority.
The Liberals don't have to reduced to two seats for them to be driven out of existence. It would be nice, but not necessary. All they need is to lose Opposition status.
ReplyDeleteThe Grits have only ever won in the last fifty years because they were seen as winners. Once that halo gets knocked off, who's going to run for them? Who's going to give them money?
Plus, I'll bet you anything that there isn't going to be a coalition, and therefore, no NP government. Period.
If Layton refuses to play ball, a LIberal leadership campaign forces the Grits to support a Harper minority on everything, which destroys them in the net election. If a confidence vote instead forces an election, the Liberals get destroyed because they have no money or candidates.
Why would the NDP - who hate the Grits far more than the Tories do - get in the way of that and throw them a life preserver? Why not just let them die and have a clean shot at the Tories themselves a year or two from now?
The Dippers are communists, but they aren't stupid.
Some of them are pretty stupid.
ReplyDeleteAnd the Liberals, unlike the Dippers, have bench strength. I'm just not counting them out the way you are. Dryden, Garneau, Rae, Bennett, Bryson, Kennedy are, whether or not I like or agree with their policies, all solid candidates and the Liberals have more on top of that. The NDP doesn't have anything resembling that kind of line-up and their dumb-ass policies preclude their getting a comperable field.
We shall have to see what unfolds, but I don't think the Liberals are dead and buried just yet.
Dryden and Kennedy are almost certain to lose on Monday, leaving neither of them with a political base for a leadership campaign. Garneau is also apparently in danger of losing his seat and is similarly situated.
ReplyDeleteBryson and Bennett both saw how well their last leadership campaigns went and would probably like to avoid going hundeds of thousands of dollars into personal debt for a leadership that probably isn't worth having.
I don't think that any of them would do what Dion did, paying down party debt at the expense of their own, especially given the way the Tories played that in the run-up to 2008.
My guess is that the ledership would be between Rae and Denis Codderre, who both have strong organizations, tons of experience and access to money. But who's going to give the party money or run or run for them after this?
Getting your ass handed to you by the NDP is a pretty humiliating experience. More so when theymanaged to do what in one election what the Liberals couldn't do in eight: break the Bloc Quebecois.
I have a strong suspicion that the NDP is not going to perform nearly as well, at least in terms of seat count, as the polls suggest.
ReplyDeleteWe'll have to wait until Monday night to find out.