Maybe it just needs a jump-start…
July 14, 2010 · By Sean
Isn’t that supposed to be what this “Tour” was all about? Giving the Liberal Party a jump-start? I hate to be the one to say it, but when the patient is dead, no amount of power will get the body going again.
And really? What is it with Liberals and transportation?
Shall we review current and past events?
In what appears to be hilarious irony, The Liberal Express breaks down within the first hour of setting off on what the Liberals have been touting as the largest event a Leader of the Official Opposition has ever undertaken. Given their current polling numbers…..quite apropos.
In other transportation news, an oil tanker has lost some of it’s load, up to 200 tonnes it’s said, in the St Lawrence seaway. How is this related to Liberal Transportation you ask? The ship was part of the Canada Steamship Lines fleet. For those of you who’s ears don’t recognize the name, this is the fleet that is registered in the Bahamas and belongs to the family of Paul Martin. For shame! I fully expect the Liberals to be as vocal about environmental damage as they have been in other situations.
Then, under the “Head in the Sand (Ash?) Dept.”, several Liberal MP’s were “stranded” in Newfoundland back in April when the Airport decided to cancel morning flights as ash from Iceland’s Eyjafjoell volcano was predicted to arrive. They began to cover their tracks by suggesting there was a conspiracy involved. It was found out that in light of the planned cancellations, additional earlier flights were provided. Tsk tsk tsk.
In 2008, then Leader of the Official Opposition Stephane Dion had a little trouble with transportation. It seems the Liberals were unprepared for an election they were so busy preparing for. When the time came, poor Mr. Dion was unable to acquire a plane to bring him around the country. When he was finally able to get one from Air Inuit, it turned out to be a massive gas guzzler that cost the party between $18,000 and $20,000 an hour to fly, and was 35 per cent less efficient than the Conservative and NDP planes. To top it all off, this was the launch of the Green Tax Tour.
Maybe it (LPC) just needs a jump-start?
More likey, it just needs a casket.
Ouch, Sean. You aren’t pulling any punches here.
So who do you think took that picture you’ve posted? Doesn’t look quite like journalistic quality. So I’d guess it might have come from a random Conservative operative assigned to shadow the Liberal tourbus.
How many of those operatives do you think are on the job? The over/under is 6. What do you say: over or under?
On another note, my colleague/boss/overseer, Jon McLeod, would be upset if I didn’t link to a related post on the Commons: http://thecommons-ccd.com/2010.....-and-round.
Well, Richard, I’m certainly glad yo have fullfilled your duty. You may eat tonight.
Sean, this is fun to point out and joke about, but I hope our readers won’t get too into this as a definitive marker of the Liberal Party’s current power (if only because underestimating them would probably do them a favour).
Richard, are we talking full-time equivalent man hours? I’d say over 6 in terms of the number of operatives, but under 6 in terms of how many are working at any one time (prorated over a 12 hour work day).
Also, I have no problem with us mere mortals taking pictures in the stead of “real” journalists.
I really couldn’t say who took the picture, it’s all over the place, but I cropped it a bit to cut out the extra stuff. The original looks as thought it was taken through the window of a passing vehicle. This particular one I took from Stephen Taylor’s blog. Still, at that time of day, it could have been any passing vehicle who was struck by the irony and submitted it to some news site.
As for operatives……I’d have to say “Under” in the shadowing department. Although I’d have to chuckle if that Just Visiting van was tailing them.
In the non-shadowing department, I’d have to say almost all of them. Partly because of the big hooplah the Liberals made about the tour, the vast majority of conservatives are looking forward to seeing what new gaffes an unscripted Michael Ignatieff is going to make next in their own communities after a dismal visit in Calgary. Besides, it’s not the conservative M.O. to send out tailers; they mobilize at the event locally.
His own arrogance, and that of the LPC in raising him to the pedestal where he now sits, has Canadians somewhat smugly wanting to see him put in his place. This whole “folksy” image of him in jeans and plaid shirts just looks wrong on him, which furthers the image that he’s only dressing the part to sell an image.
So, instead of a boring political summer, Michael Ignatieff has already given Conservatives ammunition and entertainment enough to keep him under a very intense microscope. It’s like others have said: “We didn’t think that the Liberals could do worse than Stephane Dion.”
Turns out we were wrong, and it’s like watching a train wreck: it’s a horrific scene playing out before your eyes, but there’s a certain morbid fascination to it that keeps you watching to see jut how bad it’s going to get.
Jonathan, I favor a return to a two-party system. Three at the most. I value the current alternative (Liberal) in that it should provide something/someone to keep useful debate ongoing.
However, I honestly believe that the LPC in it’s current incarnation needs to die a swift death; to be replaced with a new kind of “Liberal” party that has been rebuilt from the ground up. It happened to the Progressive Conservatives, and I think that it was a healthy thing. Now for the Liberals, it’s time.
I don’t rely too heavily on the NDP to be a reasonable alternative to government since I believe their policies and beliefs are too far left for the Canadian population. Instead, if I had to say they filled a role, it would be to represent outlier positions that may have peripheral value that needs to be considered, but shouldn’t form the core values.
I appreciate a strong opposition to provide reasonable and responsible challenge to ideas and policies. The problem is, the current Liberal Party appears to be entirely incapable of being reasonable and responsible within their own ranks, let alone as Official Loyal Opposition. I believe the Party died under Chretien and what has come after are merely the death throes.
No arguments, Sean. A strong opposition is a valuable thing.
the problem with the liberals is that they have been subverted by radical left wingers making them almost clones of the NDP as the two parties seem to agree on most issues
x2para, yes, that’s part of the problem, but the LPC has been on that slide for a very long time. It really was only a matter of time.
What the real concern is, is that as the LPC slips further into the left, the actual “center” begins to appear more and more “right”
Though we could just argue forever on this, I suspect the center is being filled by a void and that we are becoming increasingly polarized.
The LPC has actually shifted to the left, but the right has shifted considerably when you consider the reform party influence on the conservative party. Consider that Mulrooney was the extreme right in the 80s. Today he’d pass for a liberal.
RD, I can agree that the LPC has shifted left, and not just left of center. I’d also agree that the Conservative Party of Canada is more right than the Progressive Conservative Party was. However I’d also argue that the Conservative Party of Canada is more to the center than the Reform Party or Canadian Alliance was.
In the end, I believe that most parties shift and move along the scale of left-center-right and that it’s a fluid scale. But like any scale, in order to stay balanced, the “center” also has to move. The heavier any one side gets, the closer the center has to move to that end to maintain the balance and therefore gets further away from the other end. That doesn’t mean that the further end has gotten any more extreme than it was the day before, it just means that the center has moved away from it, and that the center is now further skewed to the opposite side.
If you apply a left-right position to that scale in political terms and assuming that the center has been drawn closer to the left (and is now left of the actual middle of the road), what was considered left is the new center, and it makes the unchanged position of the right appear more extreme and further away from the center of balance, even if it’s getting closer to the middle.
That’s my problem with pendulum politics. The swing often extends too far in one direction or another and will only begin to correct itself once too much of an extreme is reached and it won’t be allowed to continue any further. By then, there is so much damage control and corrective action that needs to take place that the focus is not moving forward, but rather correcting actions of the past.