Here is my theory of Canadian federal politics. We are in Oz, and our political parties are the Tin Man, the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion.
- The Conservatives are the Tin Man. Smart, courageous, but without a moral compass.
- The Liberals are the Cowardly Lion. Smart, principled, but without the conviction to defend an idea if faced with resistance.
- The NDP are the Scarecrow. Principled, courageous, but without the analytical skills required to formulate intelligent policy proposals.
How much further until we reach Emerald City?
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
I am afraid you might be right.
Emerald City? You mean the Green Party?
What, pray tell, are the lofty moral principles by which the Liberals and the NDP are guided? Not that I disagree with you with respect to the Conservatives, it’s just that I just can’t perceive a whiff of moral principle coming from any politician, ever.
And I think this may be the first time in history that anyone’s ever called the LPC a “principled” party.
Stephen, the NDP is not principled, they are simply opportunists. The Liberals simply want power. And Harper doesn’t have the guts to defend his Hayekian roots, so he tries to win people over slowly by destroying the opposition and gently cutting spending and deregulating sectors.
We will never reach the Emerald City because their are different views on how to get there, and no party will ever get its entire platform through.
Adam: I was thinking about the Green Shift – the best idea in federal politics in the last generation. Currently residing in oblivion.
Well, speaking as an NDP member I think you might be about half right about the that party.
There are some limits as to the intelligence of the apparatchiks in the party. Also, a party that has pretensions of democratic control is always going to have issues with consistency that may appear from the outside to be lack of intelligence.
OTOH a lot (essentially all?) of the NDP is operating with different premises than you are. Reaching different conclusions from different premises is not a (necessarily) a sign of intellectual inferiority.
Oh, when evaluating government policies, remember how little you know of physics, chemistry, and biology.
Remember hubris.
My read on the budget was that it was one more example of the lack of courage from the Conservatives that has lead us into a structural deficit. In my book, political courage means doing something highly risky (the traditional sense) or smart but unpopular (the Sir Humphrey sense). In 4 years of Conservative government, they’ve shown courage in taxing income trusts (smart, but unpopular), and in opening up the equalization file (risky – although the way they closed it again was hardly courageous). Have you seen a lot of courageous policy from the Conservatives that I have missed?
In my opinion, the carbon tax (smart, but unpopular) from the (right-wing) Liberals in B.C. required more guts than the sum-total of what I’ve seen from the Feds, on top of which railroading through the Canada Line (risky) and bringing in the HST (smart, but unpopular) were again courageous moves.
I don’t like the first line. I propose it be rewritten as:
Thou comest to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz…
I hope we don’t end up realizing there’s a fake wizard behind the throne?
Who gets to be Dorothy? Elizabeth May?
I can’t buy the Liberals as a “principled” party. If they were, I might actually support them.
I see them as the Great Oz: they portray a monolithic and all-powerful eminence (“Canada’s Natural Govering Party(tm)”) while desperately trying to hide the man behind the curtain.
Granted, the Liberals didn’t do a great job selling the Green Shift… but considering the puerility displayed by the Canadian electorate in dismissing, even ridiculing, the policy and Stephan Dion on the basis that he was a smart French guy … well, it was like recess at the reform school and we got the government and Parliament we deserved.
Well, there goes Stephen Gordon’s nomination as an NDP candidate in a local federal riding…..
I sense a bit of nostalgia for what could have been under Stephane Dion’s leadership. Dion’s wife–Janine Krieber–is also a Ph.D. in political science, but this time with a strategic studies orientation. Solid.
But so often politics seems to be one-tenth substance of collective value; 3/10 special-interest group agendas, and 6/10 marketing. Dion and team fell down hard in the marketing bit.
The Liberals have a long record of doing the opposite of what their main promise was during the election. Here’s a few examples:
1967: Just Society -> War Measures Act
1974: “Zap, you’re frozen” -> wage and price controls
1980 Quebec Referendum: renewed Federalism -> Patriation of the constitution without support from Quebec
1988 & 92: opposed free trade and GST -> left in place when in power
1993: Promised public works jobs -> cut deficit on the back of the unemployed
Since 2000 the Liberals have self-destructed, probably because people have finally figured out what cynical hypocrites they are.
I would suggest that if you flipped the Cons and Libs you would have an accurate analogy. The Libs have proven over time they have no moral compass unless it guarentees a vote and the Cons have proven they are too afraid to act on anything their base support wants. The NDP is dead on – and although many seem to think they are without morals and merely opportunists, the Dippers don’t realize it because, as Sowell puts it, they can’t see beyond Stage One of any idea they propose.
Hahaha, but what about the Bloc ?
… Toto?
Some of our best parliamentarians are BQ MPs. Too bad they think Canada is a bad idea (at least notionally).