New Liberals versus Old: Dead Heat
National
Liberal 33% (0)
Conservative Party 32% (-4)
NDP 17% (+1)
Green Party 10% (+4)
BQ 9%(-1)
This can’t be much of a surprise. How can a voter decide?
| Issue | Old Liberals | New Liberals |
| Kyoto | Kyoto GoGo | Kyoto Lite |
| ’stan | Against | Not really sure |
| Budget | Spend | Spend More |
| Deficit | Where? | Gone by 2200 |
| Immigration | Love’em | Love’em More |
| Quebec | Nation | Autonomous Nation |
| Indians | Cool! | Way Cool |
| Parliament | Bit of a joke | Hilarious! |
| SOW | And How | Fund’em Dano |
| CBC | Praise! | Praise unto the Highest! |
PMSH (PBUH) really cannot imagine what it might be like to govern from a set of principles and so, predictably, his government has been more or less captured by the bureaucracy. After all, how could they resist without actually having a clue about what they were elected to do in the first place.
When you are elected on a platform consisting of rather limited goals and no principle whatsoever the pool hall jibe of “So now what are you going to do?” can only be answered by consulting the polls. And the questions you ask the polster oracles will all have been suggested by the PCO and the DMs who are actually running the government. You will not ask “should we tax less and spend less?” Rather you will ask if people would prefer a notional reduction of the GST as opposed to a notional reduction in personal income tax, quietly eliding the fact that either “cut” will be purely notional.
Public choice theorists, talking about regulatory agencies, refer to the idea of regulatory capture. This describes the phenomena of a regulator rather quickly becoming aligned with the interests of the outfits it is supposed to be regulating. Of course capture can occur at the level of government itself and that is precisely what has happened to the dimwits in the CPC.
Because they had no serious reason to actually change things in Ottawa they are now as loathsome as the natural governing party ever was. As there is not going to be an election this Spring and probably not in the Fall we can look forward to the year of the big pander. No matter what loonieness is thrown up by the polls PMSH and his gang of eunuchs will get right on it.
Which will keep that dead heat going between the old and the new Liberals.
Oh joy!
Written by jay on May 9th, 2007 with 3 comments.
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