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So… that was interesting.
I am blown away at the collective humph to the nuts Canada has given to the Liberal Party of Canada. Seriously, it’s about time. The past fourteen years have been like being trapped in a room with fans of the Montreal Canadiens, listening to them talk about Les Glorieux but oblivious to the fact their team sucks.
You just want to scream “it was Patrick Roy who won you two Stanley Cups entirely on his own, you stupid fuckers… and the reason the LPC won any elections in the 90’s was an undisciplined and uncoordinated Right, not because of Paul Martin and certainly not because of Stephane fucking Dion.”.
Surely someone on the team must have understood that once you got rid of Patrick, it was over.
But of course, the Liberals refused to believe their team could miss the playoffs, because their near-fanatical belief their team is the Natural Ruling Party, so how can they possibly lose? Or even consider the possibility?
Well, surprise Habs fans… the Stanley Cup has been won sixteen times since 1993, and your last dynasty died in the 1970’s. And now it’s official, with a Conservative government until at least 2015, Canada has been governed by more Conservative governments than Liberal ones since Pierre Trudeau’s resignation.
The reason the Liberal Party of Canada lost so badly this year is simple — it’s because the best leader they could offer Canadians was Michael Ignatieff, whose only credentials were he was further right than Stephane Dion, with much better speaking skills, and his background suggested he was Stephen Harper’s intellectual equal.
But, really, how the fuck do you win the Stanley Cup with Ignatieff as your captain? The man cannot play defence, the Conservative attack ads proved that, and his only offence during the playoffs was to rip off Bruce Springsteen’s song about recovering from the 9-11 attacks. Rise up, rise up, indeed.
I think voters just got tired of being spoken to like we can’t be trusted with the scissors. The Liberal Party of Canada, we’ve been told so often, is the only party we can trust with the democratic principles they themselves gave onto us some 2000 years ago.
The problem I’ve had with the LPC isn’t entirely with their complete lack of achievement during the Chretien years — it’s the level of arrogance they maintained while achieving so little (except for the Clarity Act, which was awesome).
There’s a deep pool of corruption and ineptness they want us to ignore while they go on about their “legacy of democratic institutions”. Basically, the LPC has been wearing Patrick Roy’s sweater for at least fourteen years, but playing like they were Claude Lemieux.
People who talk for a living go on about the fear tactics used by the Conservative Party — and yes, it’s definitely part of who they are, but the Liberal Party’s only platform for the past fifteen years has been to demonize the Conservative Party — remember who called an election specifically because the opposition had just elected a new leader? Remember who produced a web-ad insinuating a Conservative government would put “soldiers in the streets”?
And then they throw Stephane Dion at us, as if we’d believe he could be a Prime Minister. That was arrogance. We must vote for him to be Prime Minister because… oh, because he’s a Liberal. Okay. Can I have the scissors? Of course not.
But, it’s all over now. The Liberal Party might make a comeback, maybe ten or twenty years from now. And if John Manley, or the head of John Manley on the body of a robot, is in charge, I might even vote for them. That is, of course, if we’re still allowed to vote, what with the Liberal Party being out of power for so long, and Canadian democracy being so fragile.
The best gauge on whether or not the LPC “gets it” will be what they do with Justin Trudeau.
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0_o
cultural sn:afu 
Well said.
I personally feel that hubris is the greatest enemy now of Canada, and even though all of our parties have their share, the LPC are the majority owners.
I don’t think we’ll ever see any kind of concerted effort to ‘unite what’s left’ because the LPC is mad at the NDP, and they’re confused and misaligned with everyone, giving us nothing. They have no core and have lost respect from all of their traditional supporters. Despite being pushed to the edge of the abyss, they are likely to continue to avoid the one thing that will save Canada: discussions about PR.
Canadians have demanded that they see these issues, but they still don’t, so Canadians will punish them for a long time to come.
Thanks very much, I think I owe Andre Racicot an apology though.
With regards to uniting the Left, I think that’s already underway with the Bloc supporters giving the NDP a shot. And if the NDP can prove themselves to be an effective opposition over the next four years they’ll absorb the LPC’s left flank.
It’s not going to take much effort to unite the Left, with the $2 vote subsidies about to be legislated away, the Bloc and LPC (and Greens) will be too broke to recover, or play again. Beyond that, all the NDP and CPC have to do is exactly what the Liberals have been doing to them for forty years… every time the LPC gets close to legitimacy, hit them with a steel bar to the kneecaps and steal their ideas.
I love your analogies. And man, did Ignatieff ever look rough.
Thanks… definitely rough and bewildered. I love how, in his concession speech, he blamed Canada’s lack of love for him on the two years of “Iggy is American” advertising by the Conservatives. Holy Christ dude, you’re allowed to do stuff as well, you know?
Seriously, I thought Chretien exposed Canadian politics as being just as nasty as the US. You’d think someone would have put that in the leadership “things to know” folder when Iggy “won” the LPC.
Thanks for coming over Hella.
Oh my God! Ignatieff looked deflated, I wonder where all that hot air went???! Talk about “shock and awe”. Really enjoy reading your take on politics Gabe, well done.
Hi Dawn, and thanks… Mike got himself a job teaching with the University of Toronto. Rosemary Barton, on CBCNN, just said it was expected because it’s what Mike is “good at”. Which made me smile.
Rosemary was also surprised at the speed with which Mike picked up a new job, but it makes sense because there’s almost nothing Mike can do to help the rebuilding of the LPC.