Checking my Twitter feed this morning, I came upon a link to a story appearing in Sun News, an organization for which I usually refuse to spare the time of day, given its rather robust roster of strident, often hysterical voices desperately seeking to emulate the tone of Fox News. Nonetheless, I can recommend something that strikes me as balanced and fairly reasonable, terms I never thought I would use to describe anything emanating from the lair of people like Brian Lilley and Ezra Levant.
Writing on the subject of a merger between the Liberals and the NDP, a subject upon which I have previously posted in its more benign form, a co-operative pact for the next election, Warren Kinsella reminds us that a year ago, Justin Trudeau seemed open to the possibility of working more closely with the NDP. However, that has now all changed:
A year later, Trudeau doesn't talk like that anymore. He and his team dismiss any talk of cooperation between Liberals and New Democrats. The only Liberal leadership candidate who favours one-time cooperation is Liberal MP Joyce Murray, and she is routinely dismissed as a defeatist crackpot for her trouble.
Ditto for the NDP:
The same thing happened to Nathan Cullen when he ran for the NDP leadership - he favoured bringing together the progressive majority, too. The front-runner, Thomas Mulcair, didn't. End of Cullen's idea.
Kinsella goes on to predict the consequence of this intransigence - another Harper victory in 2015, after which, he wonders, whether ego and nostalgia will be trumped by more practical politics and cooperation/merger will proceed.
Perhaps Kinsella's piece is neither innovative nor particularly insightful; it is, however, another reminder of just how much the leaders of the Liberal Party and the NDP are willing to gamble on Canada's future going into the 2015 election, all for the sake of their lust for power and dominance.
H/t #canpoli
UPDATE: Here is a link to a thoughtful piece by James Heath on the need for cooperation among progressives.
If these folks continue to put personal ambition ahead of country, Lorne, they will bear personal responsibility for the disaster ahead.
ReplyDeleteit is a shame, Owen, that what is so clear to so many is opaque at best to those in positions of power and responsibility.
ReplyDeleteor, Nathan was not considered a crack pot by the membership when voting on as leader. What either proposed is quite different from what Murray is suggesting.
ReplyDeleteHaving said that to suggest that this is about country is pretty farfetched in my mind's eye.
If one is for country than why wouldn't they just vote NDP which has already said that they would enact proportional representation and thus ensure each vote counted.
I also don't think that a strategy of doing this is going to work, just like strategic voting does not produce the results they intended, based on faulty data.
I think that many people, Jan, are just so eager to see the Harper regime toppled that they regard a cooperative pact as a gamble worth taking. Unfortunately, of course, what the people may want and what the parties deem to be in their own best interests are often quite different.
ReplyDeleteYou can always read Kinsella on his web site, thereby avoiding giving Sun News the hits. As a bonus the comments are better.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the tip, double nickel.
DeleteNDP-Liberal merger wouldn't necessarily have the effect people think it would.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link, Analyst. I had read that caution before, but it is a timely reminder that things are rarely as simple and clear-cut as we would like them to be.
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