[Don't read this. In the words of Roseanne Roseannadanna, "Never mind." Apparently some weirdos are floating the idea of an actual Liberal-NDP merger. That's crazy talk.]
It made perfect sense to me. But a number of Liberal bloggers appear to positively hate the idea. Which strikes me as perfectly absurd.
Listen people: The harpercons are terrible for this country. An international embarrassment, a national disgrace, and a threat to democracy. Much as I despise the Liberal Party of Canada, I realize that Liberal supporters are generally a better bunch of people than harpercon supporters and that this is reflected in their party's policies.
stephen harper's party commands about thirty per cent of the electorate. That isn't going to change. The NDP tends to get about 15-20 per cent of the vote. We're not going away either. The Liberals' former stronghold of Quebec goes about half for the Bloc Quebecois, eroding the base that previous Liberal majority governments. The Chretien years were an anomaly as the "conservative" vote was split between Progressive Conservatives and Reform/C.R.A.P. incarnations.
And, for the record, Chretien-Martin's brutal slashing of public welfare spending soured a lot of progressive voters, and Chretien-Martin-Dion's FAILURE on the environment pissed-off a lot of progressive green voters, and Paul "Mr. Dithers" Martin's idiotic minority government soured a lot of ordinary Canadians on the Liberal brand.
There isn't going to be any return of the Liberal hegemony for a long time to come. Quebec is gone. The right-wing isn't split. There's a Green Party leeching both Liberal and NDP votes. And your brand has out-lived its usefulness and validity. If you want to govern you need to accept reality. You will have less votes than the idiotic harpercons and you will need to build stable coalitions with the NDP.
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8 comments:
I don't think thats quite accurate, thwap. A lot of Liberals are a bit mad at supposed merger talks.
Mergers and coalitions are 2 completely different things, and i think you're mixing the 2 up.
Scott,
Oh shit. That's embarrassing. I guess the fact that Ignatieff had only said he was open to a post-election coalition, I didn't think there was anything to a merger of the two parties.
That's moonshine.
Before we start going all out talking about coalitions prior to an election, I would prefer to see the two parties start talking about doing away with first past the post. Failing that I think we need both of these two parties working together against the conservatives in a coalition as they would be forced to find compromise to retain control. They would certainly work better as two parties in coalition rather than one merged party.
I think that the whole post-election arrangement is completely workable.
It will provide more stability and better government.
There's no need for a merger and a pre-election arrangement is too complicated at the moment.
Campaigning on similar platforms that can then be implemented via a coalition seems a pretty simple deal.
Personally, I'm for anything that unites the so-called "left". Last election there was the grassroots ABC movement, people trying to vote strategically, but there just wasn't the voter turnout to unseat the Harpercons.
I don't think comparisons with the merger of the Progressive Conservatives and the Reform/Alliance that led to an overall loss of votes for the merged party are applicable to an NDP Liberal merger. MacKay had promised he would not do a merger, so a lot of PCs felt betrayed. I'm sure there would be some of that feeling, but I don't think it would be as much. That's just my feeling, I have no back-up numbers... but I do get the sense that people are getting desperate to be rid of Harper.
That said, a post election coalition would probably make more sense. However, would the GG go for it. She seems to march to Harper's tune.
Fillibluster,
(Nice handle!) The reference to the Progressive-Conservative and Reform/CRAP was to the time when they split the right-wing vote, allowing the Chretien Liberals to win three straight majorities.
Right after an election, if there's a harpercon majority, all the Liberals and NDP have to do is vote no confidence in it and confront the GG with reality.
There will be no political stability unless she allows them to form a government. It's standard operating procedure in a parliamentary system.
Thwap, are you sure you didn't mean to say "if there's a harpercon MINORITY"? Just askin
Shit. I'm not batting 1,000 today am I?
Yes, I meant "minority."
Thanks.
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