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!
May 9th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
You are absolutely right. I am dismayed at the nonsense that the CPC has bought into – from Global Warming to tax and spend liberalism.
However, that leaves the Canadian voter (at least ones with some hope that there might exist a fiscally conservative, foriegn policy realist, tough on crime, government which will respect provincial jurisdiction) in somewhat of a dilema.
I believe that whatever the CPC has done in the last year and a half, the Liberals would have done worse. According to Dion we would be head long into Kyoto (instead of half-assed), we would be out of Afghanistan (to the shame of us all), etc. Further, I believe that, as much as the CPC spent in the last budget, the Liberals (along with their NDP compatriots) would have spent and taxed more.
So we are left with bad and worse. At least the bad comes with some hope for not-that-bad should they ever acheive a majority, even if that hope is pretty thin.
What else are we supposed to do? Vote Libertarian?
May 11th, 2007 at 12:47 am
If their choices were restricted to the Liberals or the NDP (as they currently are at the provincial level in BC), something tells me colino et. al. would dutifully vote for the Liberals as the NDP would be worse.
I don’t how else to explain to these people that if you continue vote for a party promising more of the same (regardless of your intentions) politicians will get the message and—provide more of the same!
“What else are we supposed to do? Vote Libertarian?”
Vote Libertarian or Freedom Party – or heck, don’t vote at all. There is no law on the books saying you have to vote (although there will be one in my lifetime). Otherwise, don’t complain the next time Giant Douche defeats Turd Sandwich with your blessing.
May 11th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
As tempting as that is, isn’t the effect of your plan ceding the country to those who do vote? And if those of us who actually want small government simply stop voting, aren’t the only ones who get to decide who makes the laws people who want bigger government.
It’s easy to throw your hands up in the air and criticize “these people” for voting for the lesser of two evils, but the only thing you accomplish by doing that is the self-satisfaction of being able to think of everyone else with contempt without actually having to do anything.