No Where Man
He's a real nowhere man,
Sitting in his Nowhere Land,
Making all his nowhere plans
for nobody.
Harper nabs his coveted majority.
Layton steals Quebec from the BQ.
The Liberals and BQ are decimated.
How does this happen? How do two diametrically opposed parties, the Conservatives and the NDP, both manage to exceed expectations in the same election?
I think the answer is actually pretty simple.
For the rest of Canada, clearly, there was a pay-back for an election being called that nobody wanted. And the never-ending ankle-biting of the Liberals in particular took a toll - not on the Conservative party, which they hoped, but on themselves. While the rest of us struggled to just try and keep our homes going - the incessant arguing about "respect for democracy" and "contempt for Parliament" just fell flat.
Because, for the most part, all politics is local.
While the Liberals delighted in their talking points, shared I'm sure over many cocktail parties where they served nice little appetizers, about how we treated Omar Khadr and Afghan detainees.. and then from there, how badly we treated the KAIROS people in refusing to fund them because they dared support the "Israel Apartheid".. and so on and so forth - for everyone outside of their little group hugs, their points fell flat.
Because they offered Canadians nothing with respect to their own concerns.
About how much gas cost.
About whether they might get a raise next year.
About whether or not their children going to University would have a job when they graduated.
The Liberals offered these people nothing but ethereal talk of "respect for democracy" and vague notions of "helping families" which was premised on handing money to people that would be paid for by taxing our employers more.
But the problem is, Liberals always look down their noses at Canadians. They treat them as if they are stupid children - where the reality is that whether or not we happen to be University educated, we understand a few things.
Like, if you tax my employer more, I'm probably not going to get a raise this year.
Like, if you tax the people who run Safeway more, they're probably going to increase the price of my groceries.
Like, if you bring in a carbon tax, the cost of the gas in my car is probably going to go up.
Like, if you make it less profitable to do business in Canada, the chances of my children getting a job after they finish University is probably going to go down.
At the end of the day - they didn't trust Liberals to hold the reins. For all the mistrust of people like Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs, the public still has more faith in the free market than they do in government bureaucrats. And why is that? Well, just take a look at the Liberal Adscam fiasco.. a moral lapse that the Liberal party has never fully accepted responsibility for.
You may say, "But what about the NDP in Quebec?"
Well, firstly, the local politics of Quebec reared it's head on Gilles Duceppe as well. The ongoing discussion of sovereignty in Quebec has become tired and quite secondary to the same concerns, no doubt, which resonate all over Canada as stated above. Jobs, prices.. the BQ offers nothing to answer the questions of their citizens. Except a nagging concern that, perhaps, sovereignty would actually make things worse.
Now it is still the Province of Quebec.
So the tendency to "put your hand out" is still pretty ingrained in that part of the country.
The bottom line - the great middle has spoken. Elitist snobs are not welcomed here.
3 comments:
Great analysis.
The election was called for the sole reason to trigger a Liberal led coalition. Instead the LPC and their brain trust got owned.
Ignatieff is clearly a bitter man, suggesting that the next leader should be a woman and from a new generation (or words to that effect) is clearly a shot at both Bob Rae and the Young Dauphin, and perhaps a signal to anyone who opposes those two.
The key aspect of this election is to unblock the clogged arteries of Canadas political system. Population and economic power have flowed to the west, but political institutions were essentially stuck in the 1990's. The new alignment will not be to the liking of Quebec and Toronto, but this is a new century where Canada is a western and a Pacific power.
Yup!
That's a pretty good summary, but you know what? Most of the lib-leftists could read this a dozen times and still not get it.
That's an indicator of how they've shackled themselves to the dungeon walls of their ideological narrative. They have the key to release themselves , but they're just not going to use it. They want to remain where they are.
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