Stephane Dion has belatedly unveiled more details of his Tax Shift platform upon which the Liberals will either stand or fall in the next election.
The idea, overall, seems pretty good but I'm going to wait to see what intelligent criticism it draws. If there are serious holes in the idea, problems that haven't been foreseen or taken into account, then it might be doomed from the outset.
Then there's the issue of salesmanship. The Harpies are going to go full-bore negative on this and, following the Bush/Cheney playbook, they'll resort to as much fear-mongering as they can persuade an indulgent media to tolerate. Pretty much everybody now realizes that the Cons are flush out of ideas but that's not a problem when a campaign is going to be fought over another party's Big Idea.
The trouble with Big Ideas is that they're usually pretty tough to sell. There's a mountain of truly good ideas that never got off the ground and we're scrapped. You have to be able to sell them to your market. Can Dion sell his Tax Shift?
Once again the Layton NDP will ride to Harper's side to oppose the Liberal/Green policy, in other words to keep Harper in power for years to come. Of course, being Dippers, once they manage that, they'll duck all responsibility for the aftermath of their duplicity and try to blame it on the Libs instead. Slimy, sure, but that's the nature of Jack Layton and those who follow him.
So, Stephane has unveiled his baby. Now the real work begins. This is his chance to show that he can lead the LPC and our country itself. The cost of failing on this could be bigger than we imagine.
3 comments:
Ummm, in case you haven't been following parliament, the LIBERALS are the ones that have been in a coalition with Harper.
Since the start of this session, since they've kept them alive on every confidence motion.
Nice try though. Please keep these kinds of arguments going through the next election. I think there's no better way to reinforce Liberal arrogance.
Sure Mark. The perfidy of the Layton Dippers will shine through in the fall election when Harper needs their support the most.
I'd bet that Canadians may have to wait until October 2009 to vote against Harper - and they'll have the leadership of Stephane Dion to thank for that.
The Liberal Party - conflating their political interest with the national interest since 1867!
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