tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4184617903759486778.post7945841794953198239..comments2023-06-25T07:32:11.390-07:00Comments on The Liberal Scarf: What the Liberal Party should and shouldn't doWilliam Normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09917124934686638223noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4184617903759486778.post-67577662409605070352008-10-30T13:13:00.000-07:002008-10-30T13:13:00.000-07:00I could not agree with you more. I've been rantin...I could not agree with you more. I've been ranting about "being Liberals again" for a long time. We need to be the "center extreme". Be vocal about who we are, and what we stand for. <BR/><BR/>While other parties have to bend their ideologies, compromise their principles, and basically lie and pretend to be "perceived" as centrist, we've been here all along. I hope to remain here. Talk of a merger with the NDP and Greens would be idiotic. Deals during elections, sure. Coalition government even, but NO, NO, NO to any sort of "unite the left". Especially since we aren't even part of the left. <BR/><BR/>By being associated with the left, we gave up entirely too much ground to the conservatives. While they painted us as "leftists", we did very little to call them right wing extremists. Rather, we focused on their financial mis-management too much - signaling to voters that "Harper isn't so scary anymore, just incompetent". That led to us having to prove his incompetence - which was very hard to do when his millions of $s in ads were saying otherwise.<BR/><BR/>We need to get back to the basics - which means being proud of who we always were, bring people into that fold whenever we take the time to celebrate our liberalness (fund-raisers, rallies, policy meetings)...WesternGrithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06658358114507615351noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4184617903759486778.post-41753827122636272202008-10-30T12:44:00.000-07:002008-10-30T12:44:00.000-07:00McGuinty's last budget was admittedly a bit too le...McGuinty's last budget was admittedly a bit too leftist for my personal liking (it was drafted in response to losing a series of by-elections to the NDP), but yes, perception and context are important. For example, despite criticizing the rhetoric of the Common Sense Revolution, McGuinty has left much of the ideological infrastructure of it in place.<BR/><BR/>Provincially last election, the PC's made a play for the centre, while Hampton's NDP remained leftist. McGuinty basically played the Bill Davis card of "status-quo centrism"/Red Toryism so well that John Tory, who is a genuine Red Tory, was unable to get much space to convince voters to support him over McGuinty since the platforms were broadly similar, and incumbant governments are always much better at playing the status quo card then the opposition.<BR/><BR/>Similarly in the federal election, the Conservatives played the status quo card, and because of Dion being percieved as a leftist, and Layton making a play for the centre, the Liberals got squeezed as we were unable to tell a convincing story to vote for us over either the Conservatives or the NDP.William Normanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09917124934686638223noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4184617903759486778.post-9018330001454616302008-10-30T12:28:00.000-07:002008-10-30T12:28:00.000-07:00What an excellent post! Very thoughtful and full o...What an excellent post! <BR/><BR/>Very thoughtful and full of provocative ideas... <BR/><BR/>Personally, I've always had some difficulty with this whole notion of "left" and "right" and the "mushy middle" in between (to borrow an expression from Andrew Coyne), but I do think there's a strong argument to be made for a moderately progressive approach to governing that incorporates the best elements and innovative concepts of all parties without being constrained by doctrinaire restraints of our respective ideologies.<BR/><BR/>Anyway, again... nice job.Red Toryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00422305796158017027noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4184617903759486778.post-86526417780638758392008-10-30T12:02:00.000-07:002008-10-30T12:02:00.000-07:00Can you give any examples of how McGuinty's latest...Can you give any examples of how McGuinty's latest platform (or better yet his platform from 2003) was any more centrist than the Liberals platform was? After all McGuinty raised taxes and is against lowering corporate taxes, wereas Dion was proposing the reverse.<BR/><BR/>I know image is everything and I don't doubt the perception was that Dion was left and McGuinty is seen as more centrist, but are McGuinty's policies really any more "centrist" than Dion's were?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com