Forget the Coyneses and the Wellses and the rest of the preening political pundocracy. I’m going to nominate Skippy’s “last letter home” as the best thing you’ll read all week.
If the NDP displaces the Liberals as the Official Opposition, or even comes close to it, the Liberals are effectively finished. If Ignatieff winds up losing seats, especially in Toronto, he’ll be beheaded by his own party on election night next Monday, which leaves the Grits leaderless and in the throes of a leadership campaign.
Assuming that there even is a Conservative minority (which is getting harder to do every day,) defeating them on a confidence motion would require the Governor General to decide whether to invite a coalition or an accord to assume government or to hold yet another election. That would require some kind of assurance that said coalition could hold for at least two years. I don’t know how a leaderless Liberal Party can make such an assurance to David Johnston.
There are also large swaths of the Liberal Party that want nothing to do with the NDP, and that segment of the party can be expected to run for the leadership. Or there might be sufficient opposition in caucus to defeat the idea outright.
Barring a coalition or an accord, another election would utterly break a bankrupt Liberal Party and English Canada would be divided up between the NDP and the Tories, almost certainly resulting in a massive Conservative majority.
After spending weeks asking the question, no one has been able to tell me why Jack Layton would even want to get into bed with the Grits. As I’ve explained before, it isn’t in his strategic interest. Harper’s fear-mongering about a coalition is adorable, but it assumes that Layton is stupid enough to still be afraid of the Liberals at this point. He pretty clearly isn’t, and seems to know that if he just waits a few months, the Grits will collapse all on their own, leaving him as the only credible alternative to the Tories.
Regardless of Monday’s outcome, the Liberals won’t be able to raise money (which is already a giant problem for them) or recruit halfway serious candidates (which they haven’t focused all that much energy on anyway.) By Tuesday morning, anyone with any brains will see the future of the left in this country, and it isn’t going to include the Liberals.
But read the whole thing. (h/t Lord of the Fleas)
Send a message to the Tories that you want them to spend less and vote NDP!
I’d love to see the Libs decimated but not at the cost of strengthening the far left.
(And Justine will never be head of any party. He’s a thick trust-fund pretty-boy who couldn’t organize a p*ss-up in a brewery, as they say. Even the Libs aren’t that pathetic.)
I & O narcissists*.
Ignatieff: “they can go to hell”. “slamming his fist on the table.”
Tasha gets it: Iggy-narcissist has been injured.
Count Ignatieff: “Angry Ego Man”.
““I am not going to complain about it because it seems to give the other guys too much damn credit. I don’t give these guys damn credit for anything,” the Liberal leader said, slamming his fist on the table. “I am not going to let other people frame me up … they can go to hell is what I have thought basically for two and a half years.
“I have spent my whole life dealing with bullies. Some of them had guns,” he said in a reference to his days as a journalist working in foreign countries. “You think this stuff shuts me down? You got to be kidding.”
“The other remarkable thing in the above passage is the use of the first person. Six times in seven sentences. Ignatieff can’t go more than a few words without uttering “I” or “me” or referencing… himself.”
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/04/28/tasha-kheiriddin-election-2011-anybody-but-ignatieff/
“The narcissist likes to talk about himself and only about himself. He is not interested in others or what they have to say, unless they constitute potential Sources of Supply and in order to obtain said supply. He acts bored, disdainful, even angry, if he feels that they are intruding on his precious time and, thus, abusing him.”
“Narcissistic injury inevitably leads to narcissistic rage and to a terrifying display of unbridled aggression. The pent-up frustration and hurt translate into devaluation. That which was previously idealized – is now discarded with contempt and hatred.”
*”Barack Obama – Narcissist or Merely Narcissistic?”
http://www.globalpolitician.com/25109-barack-obama-elections
‘Waaaaaay up above an interesting question was asked.
Dirtman said: “While I’m happy to see the Libs get their comuppance, some day, sooner or later, the Cons will be defeated. What then? NDP in power nationally?”
The Cons are not going to be defeated by the NDPee, unless they commit a truly heinous scandal and the Liberals do not exist. Given the way things are going, that being in OUR direction finally, I believe the CPC will be defeated by a party on the Right. A party more unafraid to shrink government that the CPC has been to date.
The Lyin’ Libs, Dippy Dippers, Bloc-heads and Rin Tin Lizzie’s wanky watermelons all have the same policy. More, bigger government with more, bigger taxation. They get away with it because they own the media, lock stock and two smokin’ barrels. People outside the enclaves of public employees and unionists are voting against that policy. They will vote CPC today because as Skippy Stalin says, that’s the only game in town.
But, now there is a NEW game in Ottawa. SunTV and more than that, the internet. Had there been these alternatives during the Trudeau years, we wouldn’t have Medicare, we’d still have an Army, Navy and Air Force, they’d still have proper kit, and our taxes would be HALF what they are now. Because all those things Trudeau accomplished are STUPID IDEAS. They don’t work, and weren’t meant to anyway. They were meant to cement the Liberal Party in power, and they did. Even Mulroney’s PCs and now the CPC are really nothing more than Liberal Lite.
This is because up until about 2008, the media set the agenda and picked the winners. That’s no longer the case and is becoming less so every day.
The Left can’t win when people know what they are about. That means the NDP/LPC/Bloc/Greenies are going to end up consolidating into one party, they are going to keep on lyin’ and lyin’ and getting caught, caught caught. Only the dedicated bong water junkies are going with the Lefties, places like Hamilton/Parkdale, Toronto/Ronsie, Kingston around Queens, etc.
The CPC in a majority will move -slowly- on shrinking government because truth is they LIKE government, they believe in it, and a lot of them have pink underwear.
This makes them vulerable to a “Wild Rose” type party from the Less Is Better direction, guys who campaign on tax cuts, regulation cuts, Castle Doctrine, more tax cuts and tell “are you kidding me?!” stories of insane government waste and fraud in their TV commercials, etc.
That’s my take on who’s going to beat Stephen Harper or, Gaia forbid, the Coalition of Lyin’ Lefty Lizards.
biffjr @ 5:09, the socialists think money grows on trees.
Jema 54 @ 7:23, well said.
Perhaps I am overreacting, but what has been taking place lately in Quebec brought to mind the immortal words of Chiang Kai-Shek:
“The Japanese are a disease of the skin.
The Communists are a disease of the heart.”
Substitute Liberals for Japanese and NDP for Communists.
Layton is promising everything for everyone and is appealling to those that are not thinking things through. When they finally wake up and face reality, it may be too late.
I implore all Saskatchewan voters not to take a Conservative victory for granted. Get out and vote. The NDP are masters at getting the vote out and will rip IV’s out of patients’ arms to transport them to the polling station.
Years ago some professor of geo-politics declared that if Austria had not existed it would have had to be invented. Such was the importance of Austria as a buffer/transition between eastern and western europe.
Here in Canada, the Liberals have generally occupied the centre and dominated power.
However when the Liberals starting with Pearson shifted to the left, the conservatives unconsciously moved into that political vacuum in the centre. IOW the CPC are really the Liberals now.
Years back Senator Keith Davie (the liberal campaign guru) declared the Canadian voters are not stupid…..if they have 2 conservative parties to vote for they will vote for the real one….hence John Turner got thrashed.
Now we have 2 liberal parties….neither real….one with a conservative lable and the other NDP lite.
The trick now is to figure out which the Canadians will elect.
The party names are currently irrelevant. The Wild Rose/Reform will arise to occupy the right….the Liberals will wither/merge with the NDP….the blue Liberals will walk across to the Conservatives (de facto Liberals)……and life will go on. IMNSHO.
The conservatives will have a majority, the right wing voters will be unhappy with them and the left will return to irrelevance.
The vast population shift from rural to urban will be reflected in an irrelevant but sizable leftist opposition.
IOW there will likely be an end to the long gun registry, but LCC will never occur….
Thanks Cory.
Lets hope I’m right.
If the NDP form the next government look for the Province of Alberta to awaken their separation movement.
Just wait for Michael Byers as PM Layton’s personal foreign policy adviser, and Steve Staples as chief of staff to the MND!
http://www.cdfai.org/the3dsblog/?p=186
http://unambig.com/so-staying-in-afstans-about-the-canadian-brand-eh/
If T. Jack does become PM I fear for relations with the US and the effects on the CF. The NDP ideal is a gendarmerie to serve the UN and to put out forest fires at home (not brush fires abroad): Smokey the Soldier!
“The NDP Platform on Defence”
http://www.cdfai.org/the3dsblog/?p=209
Once they see the budget realities the CF will take real hits, contrary to the platform.
Mark
Ottawa