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Posted on 01/29/2006 6:38:45 AM PST by Clive
OTTAWA — John Manley’s announcement that he will not be a candidate to lead the federal Liberals is symptomatic of a greater malaise infecting Canada’s “natural governing party.”
Former New Brunswick premier Frank McKenna’s return to Canada is seen as a slam-dunk for his Liberal leadership ambitions. One high-powered Grit told me he could raise $1million for McKenna in one hour.
Where does that leave the party that desperately needs a real leadership race, not the make-believe farce that characterized Paul Martin’s rise to power? Is the party’s desire for power so deep that the obvious message emanating from last week’s election remains unheard?
Liberals who stayed away from the polls or directed their votes to other parties were trying to send a message to the Liberal leadership. It is not enough to merely find a saviour. A party, to resonate with the Canadian people, needs to aspire to certain values.
In the dying days of the campaign, it became increasingly obvious that Stephen Harper was in closer touch with the electorate. The rise in NDP support also told Liberals: Redefine yourselves. Do not assume power is automatic. It must be earned.
Harper earned the support of recalcitrant Canadians by presenting a platform that appealed to a broad base. While the Liberals trotted out “insider” economists to trash his GST reduction promise, it hit a populist nerve with tax-weary Canadians. It did not matter how many experts the Liberals lined up to prove otherwise. In their gut, Canadians knew a GST reduction would benefit them directly.
Likewise with the child care initiative. While the Liberal spokesperson Scott “beer and popcorn” Reid belittled the attempt to get dollars into the hands of Canadians so they could make choices, the voters responded. A one-size-fits-all child care system had not been delivered by Liberals in 12 years, so Canadians liked the idea of a direct payment to parents.
Making inroads
Both programs probably succeeded in making inroads in central Canada that had heretofore been denied the Alberta-based Harper team.
While the Conservatives have certainly been given a very short leash, the immediate beneficiary of the power split is the NDP. Despite Martin’s call for all Canadians to rally to a progressive Liberal alternative, he failed precisely because the Liberals had moved so far to the right that the NDP picked up centrist Grit voters.
Those voters, given a reason, would likely return to the Liberals. But it is not good enough to say you are embarking on a new race for the top job without writing a job description.
Where is the soul of the Liberal party? Why is it that a putative candidate for the Grit leadership needs a minimum of $2 million in the bank to run? How can Liberals tell Canadians they are the party of the people?
The only challenger
In the last leadership race — in which I was the only challenger to Martin after Manley dropped out — my own brother had the ballot snatched from his hands by an MP when she realized he would not be voting for the “winner.” Suffice to say that in the last election, he was not the hardest worker for the Liberal party in Montreal. His disenchantment was repeated a thousandfold across the country.
The recent election defeat is a lesson for Liberals. After his 2004 loss, Harper took the time to find out what went wrong and correct it. If the Liberals have any intention to win back their base, they must follow Harper’s example and “heal thyself.”
That Shiela would speak of the Liberal party or its leadership in other than the most glowing and partisan terms would have been inconceivable.
So it is interesting to see her writing as a columnist for the conservative oriented Sun Media flagship Toronto Sun and using her columns to take shots at Martin and the party.
"Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,
Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned."
from "The Mourning Bride", by William Congreve
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Starting with a stick of butter.
I haven't been in Canada sinc my honeymoon, but I can answer the question by analogy to the Democrats here in the States.The "party of the little guy" here happens to have the richest members of the Senate, including Kerry, Rockefeller, Kennedy and, until recently Corzine. The "party of the little guy" also has larger, albeit fewer, contributions. The ""party of the little guy" turns out to be the party
ofto exploit the little guy.The Republican Party - especially its Reaganite "conservative" wing - is the party of the middle class. That's why it gets more modest contributions and fewer large ones.
I suggest giving them Kerry.
Keep Kerry, send ketchup.
Pretty gross. Sounds though like the Libs up there are like the T-1000 in Terminator 2. They're riddled with bullets, but bullets don't stop them, just slow them down.
I suppose they are stuck with her though. :0)
What is a Grit, and why are they called Grits?
John Manley’s announcement that he will not be a candidate to lead the federal Liberals is symptomatic of a greater malaise infecting Canada’s “natural governing party.”
Right, and sh_t is a farmer's natural fertilizer.
That party is one of the several ancestors of the Liberal party. The term has lost its original content and the adjective and now simply means Liberal.
BTW, in Canada the terms "liberal" and "Liberal" have different although sometimes overlapping meanings. The Upper case L signifies the federal party or the provincial parties.
The same distinction applies to "conservative" and "Conservative".
Yanks may be more familiat with another name for Liberals, to wit, Whigs. Whigs and Tories ought to be familiar from Revolutionary War history. Canadian Liberals are still sometimes called Whigs although less so than they are called Grits. Canadian Conservatives are still called Tories.
The name stuck. The Liberals are referred to as Grits even today, although their policies have of course changed. The Conservatives are still referred to as the Tories, although the party of today is a suburban and rural middle-class party with very little "Tory" about it. The Liberals no longer support free trade; they still hate Catholics, but only in the context of hating all Christianity.
Regarding the Sheila Copps article, it is ridiculous that she thinks the socialist NDP made gains because the Liberals were "too far to the right". The NDP made gains because of the corruption issue; on some issues (like crime, for instance) they were actually to the right of the Liberals, something I don't think I have ever seen before.
Now that we've gotten the Grits out of the way--at least to some extent--it's time to kiss and make up and carry on as though this terrible spat never happened. Do you suppose Quell Soap would cleanse both the U.S. and Canada of these parasites? DDT? Clorox?
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