Stephen Harper quite understandably gloats this weekend at five years in power.
Five years.
Those have been five lost years for the Liberal Party. Five years squandered, adrift, no land in sight.
Harper is as he ever was - comfortably ahead of any Liberal rival. Sure he remains in a minority but he's become quite adept at playing inept opposition leaders in order to get his way. If he stays leader long enough, if the Liberals stay in the hole they've carved out for themselves, he might just get a majority - eventually.
Who knows? Maybe the Liberals are content to keep Mr. Harper or a successor in power for the next five years, maybe even five years after that. God knows they've done bugger all to unseat him.
Maybe a Harper majority is the only way to get Liberals to act liberal again. Maybe a big Tory win would force the Liberal hierarchy to pull their thumbs out of their asses, restore progressivism to the party and present badly needed policies that would resonate with the electorate.
Maybe the worst thing for the Liberal party would be more Conservative minority governments. The Liberal brand clings to life but it isn't what it was five years ago and it's nothing like what it was ten years back. It's in serious decline and another five years of flailing about uselessly will only bring it closer to irrelevance in the public mind.
You Libs have had five years of management by schoolboys. Isn't it time you found somebody with teeth and fists who's not afraid to use them?
4 comments:
You sound ... disaffected.
But what do the Liberals stand for? In real, concrete terms that a voter can appreciate, what do they represent other than they're not the CPC?
Till they figure out why people should vote for them, they likely won't gain traction.
I really don't know what the Liberals stand for. Theirs is a pretty obscure message that doesn't come through to the voting public. The party faithful are apparently well tuned into it and seem to be supportive enough. That doesn't stop them from larding their party's lethargy with wise warnings about waiting until the time is right which always seems to be just around the next corner or the one after that or, well you get the idea.
Five years and bugger all to show for it.
Having given up on the 3 major parties in Canada , I've found there are others like me and you . We are slowly organizing a new federal party that is near the " center " in policy most of the time But we believe that having MPs elected by less than 30% of eligible voters is not the way it should be . And we think there is much that Canadians can do to reduce emissions and save money by reducing the use of fossil fuels - think Geothermal heating / cooling . Instead of buying jets we don't need nor have any meaningful use for , Canada should be using part of the 16+ billion dollars to begin a Canada wide program of installing this system to most homes and business' . Think of all the jobs that would create over 15 years or so . And think of the reduced air emissions . Canada would have no trouble selling the oil and gas not used at home onto the world market - thereby importing cash for use within Canada .
Interesting ideas Don but who are "we" and who leads you. Reform had their Preston Manning and, while I often disagreed with him, he had a coherent vision he could place before the followers he required to organize a political party. Manning certainly demonstrates the organizational method and pitfalls in raising a new political party. Even then what he mainly did was bring down the PCs only to see them replaced with the second-rate version of the same thing we have today.
I just don't think a new party is feasible at this point without a great deal of popular discontent coupled with a powerful leader capable of drawing enormous support. Right now the Canadian public are pretty cynical and apathetic toward politics in general. That's a lot of inertia to overcome and it'll take more than a few good ideas.
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