Why I Am Not Promoting Strategic Voting This Election. I Will Not Get Fooled Again

So as you know I took some time off from my blog.  I was tired and needed a break, but knew that I'd start up again,  when the election was near.

I didn't blog about any of the leadership races, but did have an opinion.

I think the Liberals got it right, but the NDP could not have got it more wrong.

I'll post on why I like Justin Trudeau later, but first want to explain why I am rejecting Thomas Mulcair and the NDP.  (don't get mad until you read it all)

I first got back on the horse, with the idea that there would be a spirit of co-operation between all opposition parties, since the need to get rid of Stephen Harper could not be more urgent.

Then I watched the news coverage of the protests over Harper's Bill C-51, and saw many NDP members carrying signs with Justin Trudeau's image, blaming him for the Bill.

First off, it would have gone through no matter what, and no one wants to be seen as not having concern for the nation's security, especially during an election year.  The Liberals fought for amendments that would have removed the worst elements.  The NDP waited, saying they hadn't yet made up their minds.  Odd, given the Draconian nature of the un-amended document.

I think they waited to see which way public opinion would swing, hoping to gain some leverage.

When it looked like there was enough opposition, they flatly turned it down, even voting against their own amendments.  Some pundits see it as a smart political move.  I see it as a disaster.

They let Stephen Harper completely off the hook, neutralizing what should have been an important election issue.  Now he can shift focus to the economy, something many people believe is his strength.  It's not of course, but there's nothing like those taxpayer funded ads, and big fat cheques,  to convince Canadians otherwise.

Thomas Mulcair also came out of the gate attacking Elizabeth May.  Thems fighting words.  You do not attack Elizabeth May unless you are prepared to go a few rounds with me.  I was already angry with Mulcair when he went after Libby Davies, because she dared to sympathize with the Palestinians.  Then of course there was the caucus revolt against Jack Layton and the whole "pooling" scam.

However, even given his shortfalls, I was still prepared to promote him for prime minister, if he was deemed to have the best shot (not based on polls months before an election).

On my Facebook page, I have many discussions, some of them quite heated, since I have friends from all political stripes; even ones who want to kill me, or at least shut me up.

NDP supporters don't want me to speak ill of Mulcair, constantly saying that we need to work together. ABC and all that.  However, what they are really saying is that I should just get behind Thomas Mulcair.  Yet, if I bring up the Bill C-51 fiasco, many will immediately start slamming Justin Trudeau's "support" of it.

He's not a wizard and doesn't have a magic wand.  If he did, Harper would be sunning himself on Alcatraz Island.  Or better yet, on  one of the polar drifts, broken away because of global warming.

Bill C-51 is now a distant memory for most Canadians, which is sad because it really is a horrible bit of legislation, though I think much of it will be nullified by the Supreme Court.

When Pierre Trudeau enacted the  War Measures Act, in response to the terrorist FLQ kidnappings and murder, many Canadians were appalled.  This was nothing short of treason.  However, polls of the day either supported Trudeau or had no opinion.  History gives it credence.

Despite the attack on Parliament Hill being perpetrated by a mentally ill homeless man with a gun, it gave Harper his false flag war, and an excuse to further erode our civil liberties.  I can't tell you how many people I speak to, who still believe that ISIS was behind it.

If Bill C-51 is going to be used as an election issue, Harper will win that debate.  Let it go until after the election.  There's nothing anyone can do about it now.

From Anger to Hissy Fit to Oh My Gawd!

So here I was, all peeved and throwing darts at my autographed picture of Tom Mulcair (kidding I don't have one), and to relieve some tension I took out my blog.  I was just going to publish a couple of silly attack style pieces.  That'd fix him.  (Like he cared)

But then when I started doing a bit of research, I discovered that almost everything the NDP  uses to sell this man to us, is a fabrication.  I soon realized that this was not a person of principle, but kind of a buffoon.  His entire career was based on advancing his career.  No one likes a headline more than Mr. Mulcair.

I started getting a knot in my stomach, not unlike the knot I got in my stomach, when it looked like Stephen Harper was going to win the election in 2006.  I want Harper gone too, but I'd like his replacement to be worthy of the job.

With all of this conflicting emotion, I decided to start another blog.  One that just challenged some of the things people believe of him, with my usual list of sources. In fact, a lot of what I discovered, could not be made up.  It's just too weird.

Justin Trudeau grew up in the public eye. We feel like we know him, and can't deny the accomplishments of his father.  But what do we really know of Thomas Mulcair?

I went on the NDP site and notice that they only have about a third of their candidates in place.  Are they hoping to create so much hysteria around Mulcair, that they can again push through paper candidates like they did in 2011?

How is that any less undemocratic than the unfair elections act or Harper's gerrymandering?  Besides, Mulcair will no doubt self destruct before election time anyway.  He always does.

If they were really hoping to use the cult of personality to win, they should have gone with someone like Peggy Nash, who has the creds to back it up.  She could have generated some excitement.  A woman, strong and smart, with a good union background.

However, when it comes down to it, my politics are in this order:

1. Canada
2. liberal
3. Liberal
4. Green

Canada is first, so in the final days, I will promote and vote for who ever is best to take down Stephen Harper.  However, I think that everyone should forget talks of ABC, strategic voting, or heaven forbid, coalitions.

All parties are jockeying for position, and need to focus on what their party has to offer.  I visit Facebook pages of my NDP freinds and they are often more about Justin than Steve, so I don't apologize for any partisan rants, though I'm often just messing with people.

We need more political debate in this country.  That's how we got into this mess in the first place.

The NDP's Trouncing in Saskatchewan Should be a Wake-Up Call

In the recent Saskatchewan provincial election, the NDP took a thrashing.  From the Huffington Post:

The Saskatchewan NDP suffered one of the most crushing blows in the party's history Monday night. The once dominant party was reduced from 20 to nine of the 58 seats in the legislature. NDP leader Dwain Lingenfelter lost his own riding, a long-time NDP stronghold, and stepped down soon after. The Saskatchewan Party cruised to victory with 64 per cent of the vote, doubling the NDP total, and increasing their seat count to 49.

Losing Saskatchewan for the NDP is akin to the Reformers losing Alberta.  This was where it all began.

Steve LaFleur suggests that in order to regain power the party must focus on the fact that they had moved to the right in terms of placating big business.  He blames their demise on the unions.  However, LaFleur belongs to the right-wing Frontier Centre, another think tank whose staff move in and out of the Harper government.

He discusses the destruction of the PC Party in that province, but the fact is that Brad Wall was a member of that government, and the "new" party is the same old neoconservative party of Grant Devine.  Tom Lukiwski was their general manager and is now a Harper MP.  Senator David Tkachuk was another corrupt insider of those not so defunct neocons.

I think Murray Dobbin has a better take on the problems that the NDP are currently having.  In a posting before this trouncing, he discussed the direction that the party was taking, as reflected in some of the candidates for leader.

Of Brian Topp he says:

Topp was Roy Romanow’s closest advisor. But Romanow [former Sask. NDP premier] was essentially a small ‘l’ liberal and his administration slashed education and health budgets almost as much as the previous Tory regime. I once interviewed Romanow just before he became party leader and asked him about the role of social movements and he replied they were “completely useless.” His government reflected that attitude. Maybe Topp disagreed with him — but if he did, he had little influence.

And of Mulcair:

He is an unrepentant capitalist and big ‘L’ Liberal at heart who is barely out of synch with the 1 per cent the Occupiers have targeted.

In fact, when Thomas Mulcair first decided to enter federal politics, he couldn't decide whether to run for the NDP or the Conservatives.  Clearly he chose the NDP because there was more room to advance his own career.  Dobbin is right when he says:

One of the weaknesses of the party under Jack Layton was its preoccupation with tactical maneuvering at the expense of policy development. The party had almost no policy people but a lot of communications flaks. Topp had enormous influence with Layton and we can assume he was one of the architects of this approach — one that moved the party to the centre. At the same time, the party was accused of putting its interests ahead of the country’s — with some going so far as to blame it for allowing Harper to gain his first minority.

I like Paul Dewar very much and will be watching his bid closely.  Peggy Nash has an opportunity to capture the imagination of the electorate, but with the orchestrated and unwarranted attacks on unions by Canada's conservative movement, she could be in for a rough ride.

Thomas Mulcair would be an unmitigated disaster.  A Stepen Harper mini-me.  I haven't liked him since he attacked Libby Davies for drawing attention to the plight of the occupied Palestinians.

Surge and Decline

In 1960, political scientist Angus Campbell, brought forth a theory of "surge and decline" in American politics.  It mostly addressed the often conflicting results of the mid-term and presidential elections.  However, since then many have used the theory within a particular campaign.

The current Republican leadership race is a good example.  Michelle Bachmann "surged" one week, Rick Perry another.  Now they have both dropped significantly.

The NDP success in the last federal election was the result of a "surge" in popularity for Jack Layton.  Increased media attention led to advantageous name recognition, but had the campaign gone on another week or two, it's difficult to say if it would have lasted.

Saskatchewan was the NDP's mid-term election, and as I say, hopefully, their wake-up call.  In their quest to destroy the Liberals, they have forgotten who they are.  They will never outstrategize Stephen Harper, nor will they take over the Liberal Party, so they shouldn't try.

Two weeks ago the Liberals had a membership drive with a target of 5,000 new members.  They landed 5,087.  Their death is wishful thinking on the part of both the Reformers and the NDP.  The Liberal base is disappointed but not ready to jump ship.

The Right Did Not Unite, the Populist Parties Did

In 2002, the Fraser Institute published a report on the feasibility of uniting the struggling PC Party with the Reform-Alliance.  The right had been attempting such a thing since 1967, and Ernest Manning's Political Realignment.  The Report: An Analysis On The Differences Between the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada & The Canadian Reform Conservative Alliance, by Laurence Putnam, stated that "The first misconception about the Reform movement is that it is a conservative party. The Reform party has all the characteristics of a Western populist party and very few marks of a conservative party."

What was interesting about the report however, was the analysis of the 1993 election that became a turning point in Canadian politics.  One of my readers recently suggested that Harper's movement simply took over the conservative base and that his supporters were already conservatives.  Putnam's analysis proves otherwise.

The Liberal gains in the West during the 1993 election came chiefly at the expense of the PC Party, whereas most Reform party gains came chiefly at the expense of the NDP, as was witnessed in Lorne Nystrom's shocking loss in the Saskatchewan riding of Yorkton-Melville to Reform challenger Garry Breitkreuz .... British Columbians who supported the NDP in the 1980's and supported the Reform Party through the 1990's did not expediently shift their political views from the left to the right, but rather they were voting for the populist, anti-establishment party that best represented their views at the time.

In British Columbia in 1988, the NDP won 19 seats, but in 1993, only 2. The PCs went from 12 to 0, while the Liberals from 1 to 6.  The Liberals and PCs were often interchangeable.  In fact PC leader Kim Campbell lost her seat to Liberal Hedy Fry.

The Reform-Alliance's success only came about when they bought out the rights to the PC Party and pretended to be Tories, allowing them to cash in on an historical tradition.  This won't work for the NDP because the Liberal Party is not currently on the auction block.

The Quebec surge knocked out the Bloc, who were often allies of the NDP, and vote-splitting knocked down the Liberals.  If the NDP hope to succeed, they have to come out as themselves and define what they stand for.
I have always thought that we did better under the Liberals when the NDP held the balance of power.  There is no reason to believe that an NDP government with a Liberal opposition, wouldn't do the same.  However, Jack Layton led  his party in a full frontal attack on the LPC, ignoring the stronger forces of the conservative movement.

As Murray Dobbin says:  "... we are facing possibly monumental social and economic change in the next few years. The [NDP] leadership race is being judged by trying to imagine who can defeat Stephen Harper in four years — but just what are people thinking the world and Canada will look like in four years?"

We need a progressive movement and we need it now.  In four years it may be too late.

Bob Rae is in a unique position, because he has led both the NDP and the Liberals.  Maybe he can find common ground.  We can't depend on "surges" because they inevitably lead to decline.

Peggy Nash Meet Jack Layton

I haven't perused Hansard yet, but according to Brian Topp, in praising Peggy Nash:

She went directly to the heart of the government's economic strategy, asking the Conservatives why their sole priority was a corporate tax plan, when there is no evidence that this approach has created a single job. Why not put jobs rather than bank profits first?

Huh?

Haven't we done all that? In fact, Jack Layton has already approved the corporate tax cuts.

If this is just going to be another session of "big banks, big oil, big gas", I can guarantee that the press gallery will be falling asleep.

I like Peggy Nash, though I wish she had won her seat without knocking off the hard working Gerard Kennedy. But she can't get a free pass with rhetoric. She is asking why the Harper gov't is favouring corporations? By now, we all know why.

It's neoconservatism 101, which in a nutshell is about transferring public funds to the corporate sector, and by extension, those who could already buy and sell us many times over.

The Conservatives now have a majority so they can do what they want, not that they haven't already. What Nash needs to do is demand specifics. Ask the finance minister for details.

What corporations, being given this enormous gift from taxpayers, plan to hire? How many jobs? Are they in the manufacturing sector or simply minimum wage positions at McDonalds or Tim Horton's?

There are numerous studies that she could draw from, proving that corporate tax cuts do nothing other than help our wealthiest citizens. Get a few of them on record.

The Harperites are kings of Tea Party rhetoric, and you won't beat them by trying to imitate them.

Specifics, specifics, specifics.