By-Election Blues

I liked Paul Martin.

While that may come as a surprise as he is an “Evil Liberal” he seemed like the sort that would offer me what I wanted, a loose fiscally conservative approach to the money and big talk and little action on the social side of the spectrum government shouldn’t be involved in but find themselves involved in.

It wasn’t Ad-Scam that drove me away from Paul Martin, it was the Liberal Party and their moving target of values and principals that did.

If I cast a vote for the Conservatives or the New Democrats even without flipping open their platform I have a good idea of what I am getting, their principals and stances on issues has been fairly consistent, and their approach in regards to the direction this country should be moving in has been fairly consistent.

The problem I am finding with the Liberals is that they just can’t wrap their head around the concept of being the opposition party, every move that is made is a move that is made with the intention of getting back into power and when you are polling 10 – 15 percent behind the Government you have to start thinking about governing from within your role.

Every week I see a Liberal MP waving a doorknob or complaining about a blue website, or going on about an Olympic Logo and I have to ask myself is there not a better use of the official oppositions time?

Last night while the Liberal bloggers and pundits are out in full force claiming that finishing a distant third in four by-elections was all part of the plan and they were not competitive in those ridings anyway so why bother?

Why bother?
Because you are a party that now has half the seats of the party you need to defeat to enter power in the future.

This excuse that the Liberals could not be “competitive” in any of the four ridings is a reflection of what is wrong with the party.

The NDP was not “competitive” in Hochelaga, and they ran a hard campaign they knew the odds of winning were slim in, they lost but they did not roll over.

The Conservatives were certainly not “competitive” in Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup and they ran a hard campaign and shocked even some of the most optimistic Conservatives.

The Liberals are a party that is 78 seats away from forming a majority government, and the old saying “beggars can’t be choosers” comes to mind.

Especially when it seems that Quebec has been the only region that has seen any sort of growth in terms of Liberal popularity since they dumped Dion earlier in the year.

As I stand back and look at the Liberal Party and try and analyze what’s wrong I think the problem ultimately starts at the top of the party, and works its way down.

During the 2006 Liberal Leadership Convention on the final ballot I watched Bob Rae supporters crawl over the figurative broken glass to assure that Michael Ignatieff did not become leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.

They opted for their dislike of team Iggy to override their ultimate accountability to the party by selecting someone who could beat Stephen Harper.

When Mr. Ignatieff was appointed leader of the Liberal Party earlier this year, I have to ask myself what are the thoughts of the Bob Rae supporters who hated the idea in the first place?

Have they walked away from the party? Or are they simply laying in wait to be able to throw Mr. Ignatieff’s career under the first political bus they see coming?

There just doesn’t seem to be strategy coming from the top, there is no general leading and directing policy and platform, it just seems like you have 77 Independent MP’s who happen to sit together in the Commons who have their own agenda’s and plans who are held together by a mutual dislike of the governing party.

While the NDP can build bridges with the hate they have toward the government party, the reality is you can do that when you are expected to be the third opposition party in the commons.

If the Liberals hope to be elected again they need some substance, and more importantly they need a leader who:

1) Is known as a Liberal first, not a writer, professor, or New Democrat
2) Is electable in a region the Liberals need to grow within to be competitive (Ontario or Quebec)
3) Has his or her own reputation and cannot be “branded” by the Conservatives

The problem now is that every leader they select within the confines of a minority government is nothing more then a battlefield promotion because the guy before hand was blown to bits on the battlefield in front of the troops crushing their morale.

The Liberal Party needs time, they need to rebuild, they need to fundraise, they need a concise strategy and policy that the entire party can get behind and sing in unison.

I don’t see that happening within the realm of a minority government,

Leadership conventions take months, and they provide months of a defacto Conservative majority, which makes the Liberals look weak because they need to support the government or abstain from the legislation to avoid walking into an election leaderless which just harms their reputation more.

The Liberals are going to lose their Senate majority in early January, that may have been the only thing keeping them going to this point,

But with that gone moving on in this manner just hurts the party more.

The Liberals are best served by a Conservative Majority, and after last night and after it became clear with the early retirement in the Senate that will cost the Liberals their majority in the upper house.

They are a party that just needs to time.

If the Conservatives secure a majority, they can take eight months to hold a leadership convention and pick the right leader,

Someone like Frank McKenna or Dalton McGuinty who are Liberals first.

Then you have three years to fundraise, three years to develop policy, and three years to actually get some degree of dirt on the government to run on.

Most Liberals turn green at the thought of losing an election and causing a Conservative Majority, but the reality is that the Liberal Party has simply become reduce to a bunch of MP’s that sit in the corner rubbing their hands together hoping for something to go wrong with the government,

It’s easy to climb the polls because you are the protest party because the electorate is angry at the government,

But it’s a lot easier to press two on your touchtone in a poll in anger then it is to vote for a party based solely on anger.

The Liberals need to win based on what they bring to the table, and thus far they seem to hope they can win because of what the other guy left off their table.