Bulletproof Liberals can't lose for losing

JAMES TRAVERS
Toronto Star
June 14, 2005

Crazy doesn't quite capture what's happening here. Tonight the minority government faces a confidence vote Liberals would be happier to lose than Conservatives win.

-If that is the case will the liberals throw out their own government, I doubt it.

That isn't a fearless forecast for a summer election nobody wants. It is the new political reality of a capital gone all wobbly.

-I know lots of people that still want an election, oh, conservatives, the bloc amongst others.

How wobbly? Well, just weeks ago the issue was ethics, Stephen Harper was set to end Paul Martin's uncertain rule and conventional wisdom put Gilles Duceppe en route to Quebec where he would win the next provincial election before ripping the country apart.

-With MSM aquiescence the liberals have managed to avoid being labelled as corrupt like Michael Jackson has avoided obvious incarceration

Now the Supreme Court is again making medicare top-of-mind, Harper's Conservatives have executed a public opinion flip-flop with Martin's Liberals and Duceppe isn't abandoning an Ottawa sinecure.

-UH? last time I checked the supreme court was just annother place to put liberal toadies.

As they say in the infomercials: Wait, there's more craziness hidden in those three issues.

Less than a week after the Supreme Court belled a health-care problem Liberals largely created, the ruling party is, one more time, positioning itself as public medicine's brave defender.

-Yeah just like your friends in the supreme court didn't vote for this. Now liberals have to spin this to make it look like the court's outcome is not desired (but it is..), and do some fake maneouvers to make it look like the LPC is going to prevent an inevitable two-tiered health care system.

Harper's typically stubborn refusal to distance himself from Gurmant Grewal and the now infamous tapes has somehow become the moral equivalent of a litany of Liberal ethical failures, pushing voters back toward a party that, even after breaking public trust, is still seen as more likely to implement agreeable public policy.

-Last time I checked it was expedient to support one of your own... furthermore the liberals cheap attempts at fear mongering eg. deporting Grewal are going to blow-up in their faces. Somehow become the moral equivalent of Gomery? Just annother example of liberal spin by the spin meisters. The agreeable public policy is that dictated by the MSM to the masses and for which the masses have no input nor interest. It is the top-down method of governing that we observe in many third-world dictatorships.

Finally, and most mind-boggling beyond the Ottawa-Quebec axis, Martin's cabinet colleagues accuse Duceppe of cowardice for not going home, where he is both the province's most popular politician and, arguably, the separatist leader most likely to provoke another constitutional crisis.

-Just as I suspected, you guys engineered the stepping down of the PQ leader so that you could move out Duceppe, but you lost that one. Obviously, Duceppe knows all about liberal scheming and corruption and he saw your moves telegraphed well ahead of him. He did the right thing, for Quebec and for Canada and ultimately for conservatives too.

Not understanding this is not a sign of dementia. Viscous but relatively predictable federal politics has been turned on its head by a confluence of forces.

-which forces are those Travers? your globalistic/socialistic/humanistic/atheistic friends?

First there is that old favourite, the absence of an alternative. Mad-as-hell Albertans, forgetting that Ontario twice elected Mike Harris, blame the province's voters for rescuing federal Liberals with much the same logic applied by corporations when they fault consumers for not buying products they don't want.

-The reality is that Ontarians like the deer frozen in the headlights of the truck don't know what to do... stay where they are or make an uncertain move. A position that they do not like being in but sooner or later they will have to make a move, like it or not.

Until Conservatives change, many Canadians will hold their noses and vote Liberal.

-conservatives will never become PC's or liberals lite as you want them to do. Never if I have my way!

Then there is the split personality of a Liberal government that can't remember how to govern and a Liberal party that hasn't forgotten how to win.

-it is always about winning at any cost any ends justifies the means and the real prize is the money and power to be given to some of the slimiest humans living in Canada.

These few weeks are witness to a turnaround in Liberal fortunes every bit as dramatic — and forcefully executed

-what are you suggesting here? more graft and cheating and arm-twisting?

— as the one that in the last days of last year's campaign snatched minority from the jaws of defeat.

-the media saved you last year, it may not be able to do the same next time, I promise you.

There isn't much justice in that reversal. It ignores Liberal failures, puts voters in the queasy position of effectively endorsing serial wrongdoing and minimizes not only Jack Layton's success in advancing NDP priorities, but also the implications.

-then why do you defend it, you slack jawed gay loving, snivelling weasel?

In helping shift now small-c conservative Liberals closer to their small-l roots, Layton forced the ruling party to make a readjustment it has resisted since Preston Manning's reformers became a force. Countering a short-term threat from the political right by moving left, Liberals are exposing what its strategist fear is its most vulnerable flank.

-finally you said something that I actually agree with. The liberals have no choice but to move left and absorb the NDP, with the Greens becoming the new NDP in Canada. With this shift will come small-c liberals to our camp or they will face defeat in the future elections. We will also take more supporters in the crucial middle ground. At the same time, conservatives have to go more right to cover the vastness barely covered by political politics on the right. Although, I am happy to say that several more right or centre political parties have been formed, their day is yet to come and they are not any kind of force in the Canadian electorate system at the moment.

Among other things, that shift makes a Prime Minister who made his name as a prudent finance minister the greatest threat to his own legacy. But politics is mostly about winning and what Martin and the Liberals are doing now is, at least in the short term, working.

-politics is NOT ABOUT WINNING (although I agree that a liberal would think this way..), politics is about helping people, as many people as possible.

Willing again to be bought with their own money, voters aren't looking past Martin's scattered promises to worry much about cost or how the underlying helter-skelter deals push the country toward the banal vision of a community of communities. Still, in a capital now living only for the moment, that's good enough for a government as surprised as it is grateful to be positioned so well for tonight's confidence votes.

-the vote hasn't been held yet, don't be too certain. But again I do agree with you in your comments here, the political landscape looks bleak but it can and will change.

A country embarrassed by so much political bad behaviour doesn't deserve to be further punished by a summer election. But, should craziness prevail, Liberals are set to be its beneficiaries, Conservatives its victims.

-that is exactly why this country deserves a summer election, its own reticence to face reality. I expect a loss of seats for liberals and that is when the fun begins.