Irony

For all the riding on Obama's coattails the NDP has attempted to do in its rhetoric, the NDP's behaviour the last few days has had a distinctly Republican tone to it. Obama's stimulus package passed the House with a grand total of zero Republican votes, and Republicans are already split between the need to go with the general popular feeling that Obama needs to succeed, and the itch to oppose him based on partisanship alone.

Meanwhile, the NDP, after having Jack Layton's out of hand rejection of the budget continued the grand tradition which has emerged under his leadership, that of declaring the NDP will vote no regardless of what the actual legislation is, without any second thought put to such strange and foreign concepts to the Jack Layton NDP as "actually getting results from a minority parliament" and "contributing to government policy when the people want the government to work". After the legislation passes with zero input from the NDP, or the NDP managing to deliver any results to its voters from a social democratic perspective, the NDP somewhat bizzarely calls itself the official opposition. The NDP has further demonstrated its studying of Karl Rove by having its first reaction to be going negative.

From a purely pragmatic and partisan perspective, yes, the NDP Jack Layton has built is stronger then it was when he took it over. But the NDP, is, and it always like to remind is, is a different type of party, oh yes, above the fray of crass partisanship, working for real Canadians and acting as the social voice of Parliament. Now if only the NDP could demonstrate that it's decision to gut the Paul Martin government's plan for child-care, the environment, or aboriginal people's and help get Stephen Harper elected and in power has helped contribute to a social democratic agenda, as opposed to simply allowing the NDP to raise it's fists and not actually gain nothing for its constituents, but by golly, they sure can raise those fists with even more self righteousness then they could when they were actually influencing policy and contributing to developing progressive policy under the Martin government!

And in the end, for the NDP, what is the main goal? To be a raised fist when what society and the economy needs are outreached hands, or to actually contribute to the decisions of the House and not just be a group of trained seals banging on the table and then calling themselves effective?